who are the shadows
by paradox102creator
Summary: didnt start that well, but got way better later on also has star wars and i fixed a few things
1. Chapter 1

As no went through the ship's and helmet's log from what they could piece together the op didn't at all well with no survivors all they had to go on was the logs which left lot's of gaps in the information. From what they under stood this is what happened.

* * *

><p>As the unsc super cruiser Marco readied for launch the captain once again checked the weapon status he didn't want any thing going wrong in this op.<p>

The ship had 2 eves 3 super mac guns 1000009564 ,300 mm turrets all online and the ships length 300010 miles long.

also he had 2 sanghili ships under his command. his mission to figure out whether this ring has flood to find out they would plug a .a.i. into the ring and annualize the data except this wasn't a halo or shield world it was a new structure. the three squads sent down had just reported that no reported flood exists on the infrastructure was secure for now although they said its purpose was not to fight the flood which got captain flowers nervous and curios to its purpose.

That's when the alarms rang the marines kept calling out on the radio.

Flowers only caught little bits of the yells.

"Their everywhere."

"Shoot, shoot."

"Get me out of here."

"Get away, get away."

Flowers immediate thoughts were flood just to be proved right.

The conformation came from the moving biomasses on the planet.

The radio went silent meaning the marine and sanghili squads were dead.

Which meant priority 1 glass the structure! The super cruiser went to glass the command and all areas around it. Then the structure opened and activated it was a slip space portal and obviously the flood made it in but the gravity was too much for the super cruiser it was getting sucked in but captain flowers gave one more order.

The distress call was received by the other ships but was to late to help since they were on different sides of the structure.

Unsc super cruiser Marco

"Tell the non critical personnel on board to get some rest were going to need all the strength we can get." Ordered flowers. "Even if its slipspace we still need time to travel I'm going to go into my quarters find me when we exit."

* * *

><p>Three days later the slip space exit alarm sounded.<p>

"All personnel to your battle stations." Ordered captain flowers over his com as he sprinted to the bridge. And sat in his chair.

"Exiting slip space in three two one." Said the navigations officer.

Republic star cruiser ballimount.

Captain Depp was having a bad day first a separatist fleet arrived. Then a hole ripped open and released a horrible creature on the planet he was protecting and the troops below were requesting help which he could not send during his battle and now another hole appeared and this time it was a ship the largest one he'd ever seen and probably will see.

Captain flowers was surprised to see that he dropped in the middle of a battle he would have assumed that it was the flood that took over ships but the ships that were fighting were two different types altogether and they detected no flood in the area.

Then flowers had a terrible thought the flood was on the planet.

Sure enough detectors spotted flood on the planet.

Then an explosion hit and the entire ship jolted violently.

"Sir boarding crews on decks 89-94." Reported the damage controller.

"Send all available squads to send those punks back to where they came from." Ordered flowers.

"Captain we have detected several people in amour down on the planet surface." Reported the radar watcher.

"Send some odst's down to assist and clear an area so the three pelican's can retrieve them."

"Sir yes sir."

* * *

><p>Odst commander marksworth<p>

He loaded into his drop pod with his 4 shotguns and 2 smg's he closed the lid and his pod loaded into drop position.

"SNAP!" The fire from the battle hit the pod bay and unfortunately his pod secure line had been blasted he and two others had theirs blasted too left early he had to release the secure line to drop the parachute hit with a struggle against the g forces he hit the Manuel override and released the secure line and active activated the parachute button and the descent jerked and slowed as he neared the ground he braced for impact.

"BAM." he looked around his pod his weapons still secure the lid still closed and all release explosive ready to detonate. he picked up his s.m.g's and hooked them to his sides and the 3 shotguns to his back and the last shotgun in his hands he palmed the release and small booms followed releasing the lid exposing himself to the battle and 3 combat forms jumped at him blowing the first one to bits he rolled between the other 2 stood up and blasted the other 2 with the same results instant incineration he ran towards the unknown people shooting all the flood in his way.

The republic clone troopers had setup small barricades in a 4-way road when the creature attacked. The bunker was set up for them to fight off separatists' not new life forms. Clone Commander ser had been in charge but they couldn't hold out much longer then these creatures until 2 weird pods dropped from the sky and 2 people came out with unknown weapons that incinerated the creatures and ran towards the bunker.

'Sir new contacts orders." yelled a trooper

"let them in." ordered a surprised commander ser at this news.

* * *

><p>Marksworth was surprised to see that they just let him in. he sprinted inside<p>

He and his counter part had been sent straight to the commanding officer by the entrance guards.

"Who are you? Where did you come from?" Questioned the commander. "What are those weapons? How did you get here? Are you here to help?"

"We are unsc odst 51st division. We were sent down to help fight off the flood until the Eva pelicans can land and get us out of here." Explained marksworth.

"2 men that's it just 2 men." exclaimed commander ser

"The rest of our odst's are on their way our safety lines got hit and launched us early but the rest are on their way." said marksworth

"What's your names." asked ser

"Marksworth and lewer." said marksworth

"Mine is ser." said the commander.

And a shadow fell over commander ser.

* * *

><p>UNSC super cruiser Marco<p>

Captain the shields wont hold out much longer we need to go now. yelled the damage controller

"Are the pods and pelicans out of range." asked flowers

"Sir yes sir." yelled the navigation

"Then get us the hell out of here." ordered flowers

Within seconds they were out of range and safe.

"Bring up the stored a.i. mind meld." ordered flowers

"Sir." saluted a soldier and he ran off towards the a.i. storage bay

The Marco had three a.i. stored in case they needed one. Although flowers liked to run the ship manually but in emergencies he liked to have one. In their storage state they can sit like that forever and never go rampant even with improved technology they only extended the life line to 8 years so he liked to keep them in storage to make them last longer then before so had decided to experiment with meta stability which forerunner a.i.'s had achieved.

A few minutes later the marine returned with a microchip containing the a.i. mind meld and held it out for flowers to take witch he did and inserted it in the a.i. pedestal. And it shimmered to life showing the a.i. mind meld in his holographic state.

"Greeting's captain flowers what is the emergency." Stated mind meld.

"Mission records check them and they'll explain the situation". Said flowers.

"I see." Said mind meld. "I suggest glass the planet with speed 1370 knots on sectors 50 through 98."

* * *

><p>The shadow that loomed over ser was the rare pure form huge dangerous nearly indestructible.<p>

Ser dived behind his desk where he always had a hidden blaster rifle as the odst's pulled out in one hand a shotgun and the other an smg.

After 2 minutes of dogging and diving the pure form finally died.

"i swear those pure forms are flood hunters." commented marksworth

The odst's guarded the doorway so commander ser could put on his amour.

It seemed the pure form was just one that got past by accident but marksworth knew better he knew that a pure form meant that there was a flood hatchery nearby because pure forms rarely traveled far on their own.

"Captain marksworth do you copy. We have arrived on the planet near the distress call. Where the pelicans are." A odst yelled over the radio.

"Troopers unidentified contacts are friendly I repeat unidentified contacts are friendly." Said marksworth. "We will arrive at your location with them, over and out." Marksworth turned to the clones. "We need to get moving before the flood close off the escape and kill us."


	2. Chapter 2

When they had rallied all the remaining clone troopers' commander ser and marksworth and lewer led them towards the location of the drop zone blasting the surprisingly few amounts of flood.

"I don't like this." Muttered marksworth with radar showing zero flood.

They started to hear sounds of gunfire.

"We must be close," yelled lewer

And with that he ran ahead and around a corner seconds later.

"Ffffuuuuu…"

And was cut short from the direction lewer had ran all the troopers stopped and pointed their rifles in almost all directions expecting an ambush. Marksworth and two troopers walked slowly towards the corner and rolled into a kneeling position weapons raised but all the saw was a blood splatter across the wall slowly dripping onto the floor and a blood smear as something had been dragged away.

"Should we go after him sir?" asked a clone

"No he's gone once he's infected he will come after us and we don't want to be here when he does." said a grim marksworth.

"We keep going then?"

"Yes, but keep your guard up the flood are still here."

They made their way to the landing pad the gunfire slowly stopped and when it did the whole group broke into a run for fear that the flood beat the odst squads only did they stop when the reached the perimeter of the landing area a dead odst hung on the fence with no one living around marksworth feared the worst until eight odst's jumped out from behind cover startling the troopers several stumbled the only one that didn't even flinch was marksworth.

"Nice try bedin but I don't spook easily," remarked marksworth

"Guess I have to try harder next time." Commented bedin. "Nice timing we were about ten minutes away from leaving you." He looked the clone troopers and said. "These must be people we were sent to rescue."

"Are the pelicans in the landing pad." asked marksworth

"Yep and the perimeter has been holding."

As if on cue a crackled panicked voice came over the radio. "HELP! We need help! The flood is overrunning our position."

"Damn. Pull all troops back to the landing pad I want every one on those pelicans and out of here immediately." ordered marksworth

The group ran with replenished speed towards the landing pad zigzagging around the drop pods that were sticking out of the ground they heard the pelican's engines starting up.

"We must be close," yelled a odst

Sure enough the pelicans were coming into view and were starting to hover inches above the ground with the odst's running to them and climb onboard.

As the group ran to the pelicans a second wave of odst's appeared off to their right but the flood was chasing this one.

"Get your troopers on the pelican." Marksworth ordered commander ser. "we'll hold them off until and join you when you are all aboard."

"Sir." The clone the troopers saluted and started there way onto the pelicans. The odst's took aim and opened fire on the flood. The shotgun and smg rounds ripped into the flood tearing them apart but the endless hordes kept coming inching their way forward towards the odst's. Commander ser took in the situation and yelled. "Covering fire."

The troopers from out the open rear of the pelicans laid down a spreadsheet of fire slowing the flood long enough for the odst's to jump on board.

"Thanks." Marksworth said to ser. "pilot. Get all the pelicans get back to the Marco we need to regroup."

"Return us to the ballimount." ser ordered.

"Sorry but which ever ships are yours are still in battle at this point any ship going there is bound to get shot down and we still have to go through quarantine to make sure there is no flood stowaways onboard."

"FINE!" yelled ser

It took 49 minutes to get clearance to board the Marco

Ser who monitoring the progress of their quarantine from the cockpit was shocked to see the size of his rescuers/captors ship it was at least 96 cruisers long and 56 wide. "Marco" was painted on the side as they neared the airlock.

After docking in a dock that could fit three republic cruisers marksworth asked the dumb AI to lead him to the bridge.

"Come with me." marksworth said to ser

"You will have to take a longer route because the enemy boarding crews are still in control of sectors 67, 64, 54, 19, 86, 3 but we have halted and divided their troops and the sectors cannot be taken back without casualties. And their troops are droids so venting atmosphere will be pointless. We currently fortified defensive positions and have them at bay and under monitoring by the current AI mind meld." the dumb a.i reported.

The walk to the bridge was long and quiet until they came upon a blast door labeled bridge. Commander ser took a deep breath walked in as marksworth began to give his report the apparent captain silenced him with a wave of his hand.

"Im captain flowers." He introduced himself. "Who might you be?"

"Clone commander ser." and saluted

"Clone?"

"The clone army. The republic?" ser said as though trying to jumpstart his memory.

"We do not know of any clone army or republic but probably that's because we're not from any where around here_. But where we're from the unsc and its ally the sanghili has defeated the remaining covenant and the only threat left is the flood remaining in some forerunner instillations. And all ships and military are to combat flood and the insurrectionist's. And thankfully you did not did not experience the horror of the war with the covenant although that was hundreds of years ago but I have seen enough helmet log's to understand the horror of the victims."

"Well, our ships are going to need help in the battle."

"Then patch us into your com channel."

Ser handed the captain a hand held COM. The captain took it and plugged it into the computer.

"Mind meld I need the COM channel from this device."

"Already done captain." Came a voice from the speaker and a life size hologram.

Hmm. ser thought. They have hologram tech too

"Contacting them now." Continued the hologram.

A view screen turned on and showed captain Depp.

"Would your fleet like some assistance and we seem to be in possession of your surface squads?"

"How did you obtain our clone trooper's?" Depp questioned

"We rescued them from the flood which had infested the planet and to keep the flood from spreading we had to burn the entire planet to the ground. Now do you want some help or not."

"We'll take you up on that offer."

Flowers terminated the COM and started give out orders.

"Start with a sniper shot from the left super Mac I want to how much damage a heavy round does.

A heavy thump shook the ship ser watched as a large streak launched from the ship and went strait for the cis ships it went through the first one's shield on the right through the ship and through the shield on the other side doing this again on two more ships until it stuck in the side of the fourth ship and caused it to get stuck in planet's gravitational pull as the other ships had either exploded or lost power and were disabled."

Flowers had the look of a child on Christmas morning. "Well, That was the funnest thing I've ever done! Let's do it again. Mind meld lock the other super Mac's to have the same effect."

Depp was amazed to see the streak that came from their new ally disabled four cis ships. Captain Depp wondered what other devastating weaponry they had first the weapon that can burn an entire planet to the ground and now this. Depp was extremely glad these people were on his side. Then two more shots from their new allies' destroyed more than three quarters of the remaining ships leaving 3 heavily damaged cis cruiser's which were quickly dispatched by nine small missiles that had launched from they're ally.

Flowers turned and smiled at ser. "let us resume negotiation's. "

Open the channel to their captain. The view screen turned on and once again showed captain Depp.

"We were never formerly introduced Imo captain flowers," captain flowers.

"Imo captains Depp if you'll excuse me I still have to return to a republic port to do repairs we'll need our troopers back please."

"Sir several of the fleet ships hyperspace drive's have been damaged and we do not have the supplies to repair them," navigation's said on the republic cruiser.

Flowers over hearing this said. "We have more than enough docking space for your fleet and we'll do what we can to help your repairs.

"Do we have a choice?" Depp said sarcastically.

"I guess not. Ill has the docks prepped and waiting for your arrival. Your troopers will be in hanger 1 but the rest of your fleet will have to be in hangar five hanger three is under control by the droids."

All right begin landing procedure. Captain Depp ordered


	3. Chapter 3

Flowers personally oversaw the docking of three cruisers and it went perfectly. Flowers walked up to meet Depp when the doors to the fast transport tunnel which was basically a highway that went from bow to stern like a spine which was large enough for four tanks side by side and high enough for a pelican to fly through. Flowers jumped to the side as the door flew right where he was and bounced off the floor and impaled its self in the side of the nearest republic cruiser. The droids poured through the door. As flowers hid behind a pelican.

"Captain flower's I've figured out that the droids are targeting you since you're the captain." mind meld reported

"Thank you for the update." flower's yelled back angrily

As laser's rained down around him flowers just sat there. Angry that he couldn't do anything but sit there. After about ten minutes one of the engines on the other side of the pelican exploded the leaned towards flowers before resettling itself on the landing gear but still leaning towards flowers because of the loss of the forward engine on the other side. Flowers figured he had minutes before the pelican tipped over and crushed him with no weapons he was helpless that's when he realized he had his magnum still in its holster strapped to his side. Even though he had a magnum it wasn't going to keep him alive if ran at the droids firing his pistol he needed new cover but there wasn't any nearby and the landing gear was starting to lean a little more towards flowers.

"Where are those marines mind meld?" yelled flowers into his COM

"Estimated 13 minutes 45 seconds counting." mind meld reported

"Ill be dead by then," responded flowers

"New contacts coming from republic ships."

Flowers looked and saw hundreds of white armored with t frowned helmet visors and rifles that fired the same lasers but a different color then the droids and had a higher effectiveness than bullets. Two broke of from the charge and ran to flowers.

"Sir are you all right." the first one yelled.

"Just fine." Replied flowers.

"We need to get you back to safety." the second one said

"Lets get him back to the cruiser." the first one said

The landing gear chose to break at that moment and started to fall. The first trooper tackled him out of the way as the weight of the pelican crushed him in a sickening bone crushing sound. Flowers looked but all he saw was a pool of crimson growing on the floor then flowers looked at his rescuer and saw that his helmet had been knocked off and his face…. His face was the same as ser's.

"Dear god…. There is clone army." Flowers muttered to him-self in shock.

The clone escorted flowers to the republic cruiser and then to the bridge where captain Depp waited.

Flowers and the clone walked through the door into the bridge and met Depp in person for the first time.

"Nice to meet you in person." Said Depp. "I take it you didn't expect a droid attack."

"No, it was unexpected if you would I would like to figure out where they got through our defenses." "Mind meld how did they get through our defenses."

"They apparently cut through a wall and broke into the slipspace engine room and cut off my control of the engines. Engineers are also on the way to do repair's."

"Dammit I want the engines online immediately and neutralize remaining hostiles."

"Aye sir."

A familiar but higher pitched whine rattled the Marco and transferred itself to the ballimount.

"Please for the love of god tell that was you." flowers asked mind meld

"No sir its out of control." mind meld reported

Activate the alarm.

"You might want to strap yourself down this is uncontrolled and they are a lot rougher than controlled." Flowers said to Depp.

"Uncontrolled activation in three-two-one."

And with that the ship shuddered at an alarming rate and was engulfed in a bright light and disappeared.


	4. Chapter 4

The ship exited slip space heading towards a planet with no engines they were set on a crash course.

"Report." Ordered flowers.

"No engines, no control of the slipspace drive and the planet has life sustaining atmosphere but an odd layer of radiation in the upper atmosphere that I predict the ship will bounce off of and float away."

"try and manoeuvre us into geosynchronous orbit." ordered flowers

All the lights started to flicker for a moment and another later they went out completely two minutes later emergency lights came on alarms went on and off in the hanger.

"Depp come with me to the bridge." Flowers said. "We need to figure out whats going on."

with the doors closed and power failures flowers figured the fastest way to the bridge was to use the spinal highway which still had the threat of droids and was cluttered with smashed warthogs. to get through flowers took a falcon out of the hanger and flew it right through the spinal highway in the direction to the bridge passing over warthogs destroyed, overturned, disabled, unmanned and the sentries placed to stop any more assaults. Depp was always looking out the side of the falcon at the carnage below.

They came across a line of advancing scorpion tanks searching for droids to obliterate. After that the carnage slowed.

The falcons speakers activated.

"Sir Im losing power and control of the falcon and Im seeing these tiny droids skittering around out here Im going to want you to jump on my mark." reported the pilot

"what?" exclaimed flowers

One of the droids climbed into the cabin.

"buzz droids." exclaimed Depp

Flowers shot it with his magnum it shattered and fell off the falcon.

Still at full speed the falcon turned sideways to almost an instant stop throwing both captains and the two clone's right out the side of the falcon and bounced off an overturned transport warthog and hit the floor as the falcon flipped and hit the floor before exploding.

"No." whispered flowers.

Depp placed a calming hand on flowers's shoulder. "We need to get to the bridge."

"come on we need to get the warthog turned over." flowers ordered

It took flowers, Depp and the clones 3 minutes to turn the hog over. Flowers jumped into drivers seat, Depp in passenger, clones in back watching for more droids.

Now that they were on floor level they had to dodge rubble which took a lot longer than flying through the highway.

By the time they reached the bridge they were ten minutes from hitting the radiation layer of the planet.

"mind meld status." ordered flowers

"We still have no engines and the so called buzz droids are dismantling any machinery they can find and we don't have enough cryo pods so we can only last a couple years until we run out of breathable air and using the built in gardens we have food for 1 year 3 months 25 days water for…."

"Can we land on the planet?" Flowers getting tired of bad news. "We could land on the planet and maybe theres civilization maybe we can do repairs."

"Without engines and emergency thrusters we cant adjust our course."

"Escape pods?"

"Negative they no long are pressurized because boarders blasted the view ports."

"Damn do we have anything?"

"We do not have enough pelicans or….…"

The ship shuddered from bow to stern.

Captain the radiation levels are increasing and seems like it is reaching out to us.

every one looked out the window and what they saw was a giant orange hand coming from the planet reaching towards the ship grasped it and in that instant every ones vitals dropped to K.I.A and fell to the floor or slumped on their control panel's all the droids soon followed and the marco's slipspace drive as it was uncontrollable activated sending it on its way back to the forerunner complex that sent it to the star wars galaxy in the first place


	5. Chapter 5

Off camera.

Flowers and everyone else onboard got up and off the floors.

A flower looked out the view port expecting to still see the giant orange hand still smothering his ship but was surprised to see layers upon layers of dirt.

Dear god did we crash? Asked flowers

"No s-ir-ir-ir-ir-ir-ir-ir-ir-ir-ir-ir-ir." replied mind meld with glitches before flickering then going out.

"Damn it, navigation report," ordered flowers.

"Sir the entire ship is completely underground don't know how deep we are, still airtight, and for some reason the beacon we activated I was receiving from where we are and from where we were for a moment until a slipspace rupture. Before we got where we are now. And using the beacon and how far away we were from the planet before I can figure a rough estimation of how far underground we are." Reported navigations while consulting a handheld computer tablet.

"Good maybe we can reach the surface and maybe survive long enough for the someone to find us."

Everyone was nervous today because of the weird loss of all magic for one hour and the planet wide earthquake during that hour and a mountain rising out in a unpopulated area well beyond the everfree forest although no pony panicked every pony was on the verge.

Twilight was in her study seeing if there was any known cause of the events but they're absolutely nothing not even a clue.

Frustrated she closed the last book in the library she hadn't already looked through sighing she went to go find rainbow dash twilight figured dash could get to her safely to the mountain and as twilight figured the mountain held the answer.

She found dash sleeping in a cloud.

"Rainbow dash." She called. "RAINBOW DASH."

She woke with a jolt and fell out of the cloud and landed with a thud in front of twilight and looked at twilight.

"What's so important?" Dash asked.

"I think the answer to the recent events lies with that mountain and I don't want to get lost."

"Fine ill lead you to the mountain."

"Sir I've figured out how deep underground we are, were about 12 feet underground we can dig our way out but I would advise self sustaining suits just to be safe."

"Fine begins the digging I don't like being trapped here with no exit.

Yes, sir.

Ill sends two jet troopers to help scout the surface of this world." Depp said

"Agreed I'll send marksworth with a jet pack."

"Agreed."

The marines packed explosives outside the top air lock after they closed it they used the remote detonator and a muffled thump and they opened the air lock saw light from a real sun although from their pressurized suits they could not feel the breeze.

"Come on." One of the jet troopers said. "Good thing we have the jet pack's because it's looks as though your ship created a mountain."

"Hmm." Said marksworth distracted looking in the distance at a far away part of the forest he pulled out his sniper rifle and looked into the scope and he saw what looked like a bird although it was to far away to make out anything other than wings.

"Captain flowers I've spotted what looks like a bird other than that nothing out of ordinary scans indicate air is breathable." Marksworth reported.

"Good scout the forest see what you can find."

"Yes, sir."

"Come on," marksworth motioned to the clones. "Let's go."

Dash flew down to twilight and told her about the explosion at the top of the mountain and the possibility of new ponies that could be out to conquer equestria and that they should go back and get every one else.

"No were going to the mountain and finding answers." twilight stated firmly

"Okay." dash replied resignedly

Half an hour later twilight saw something moving through the bushes in her direction they had no features two with t frowns and one with a black head all carrying these long hollow black sticks when they saw her they pointed the sticks at her. That's when dash dropped from the sky and hit the nearest t frown and knocked the apparent head cover off and saw his face definitely not pony, everyone watched in horror as he writhed in agony on the ground his mouth open in a silent scream and fell still then flash in a blinding light the light died and the empty armour collapsed the thing inside it gone, the other two took two steps back turned around and ran the way they came.

Twilight still staring in horror at what had just happened.

"Lets go back." dash said

Another flash similar to the first one came and went and this time left a winged white stallion short cut black mane sturdy muscle build but he was unconscious.

"Let's take him back maybe we can get some answers from him." twilight suggested

"Fine just let's get going." Dash said nervously.

An hour later they were back in ponyville and getting some awkward looks from others as they carried him to the clinic.

Rarity came up and asked. "My goodness what happened to him," gesturing to the stallion.

"That's what id like to know." Twilight replied.

"For the republic." he murmured softly to himself

Twilight sighed. "He keeps talking to himself in his what is it sleep, coma, death?" Twilight explained.

They reached the hospital and the doctors took him and later told the trio that he in a coma for an unknown reason and they don't know when he would wake up and that he would keep muttering to himself.

"Either now we go back or we wait for him to wake up for answers." Twilight stated.

"Wait." Dash said.

"Why?" twilight questioned.

"You remember what happened to the one who wore this." Dash said taking the T frown helmet off her back that Twi hadn't noticed before and placed it on the nightstand of the stallion. "Did you even think that this is him that something happened to him that turned him like this or maybe he always was."

"That's why I want answers," Twi retorted.

"What is going on." rarity demanded

"Met new creatures." dash said

"And they did this?" rarity asked pointing at the stallion

"No, he showed up afterwards." Explained Twi.

"Ladies." A doctor said. "Please if you would we need to get back to work."

"Fine," they all agreed.

"I want to know if something happens." Twilight whispered.

"Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod." marksworth kept saying all the way back to the ship.

"What ever you do not let any one get exposed to air here." The remaining clone said over the radio.

"Why. What happened." asked flowers?

"I have no clue but it wasn't good." Explained the clone. "We lost gosman."

"What? How?"

"A fucking blue Pegasus with a freaking rainbow hair hit him in the head and knocked off his helmet and he disappeared in a flash of light after suffocating." Marksworth yelled into his COM.

"What in hell was in your last meal." flowers asked.

"Im fucking serious that fucking did happen, we have a major problem."

"Okay come back on the ship."

"Meet you on the ship."

No one had believed marksworth or the clone until they saw the helmet recording and after that no had any idea what to do, flowers just sat there in his chair staring out the view port as though he was still flying in space, Depp just stood there starring at nothing, most of the command crew that had seen the recording went to their bunks laid down and stared at the ceiling the rest either passed out or went the ships psychologists. Marksworth was in a panic and the remaining troopers were trying to hunt down the droids in case the cut through a wall to the outside and killed everyone.

Fortunately the droids weren't going out of their way to get off the ship so they stood a chance even without an a.i.

Marksworth shot another droid trying to get his mind off the situation and was trying to get the image of gosman suffocating out of his head.

"Do you know what's wrong with the bridge I cant raise any one on the comm." a marine asked.

Reality caught marksworth and he curled up in a ball started to cry, the marine stared in confusion at the crying commander.

"What in hell just happened? What is going?" Asked the marine. "Dude he's an odst, I didn't even know odst's had feeling's," the marine commented to his friend. "Something major must have happened."

2 .am

"Huh." gosman gasped awake he looked around he felt like he'd been chopped to confetti with light sabers then stitched back together without bacta. He realized he was in what looked a hospital he saw his helmet on a night stand beside him he tried to pick it up but he had no fingers he looked at his hand but he didn't have one he had… he had…

The night doctor heard "Aaaarrrrgggghhhh." She ran into the room but all she saw was an open window and the stallion gone the thing dash left on the nightstand was also gone. She ran to twilight's house and woke up twilight and told her what had happened and twilight told her to stay in the hospital and get back to work.

"Ill sees if I can find him." Twilight said.

The medic went back to the hospital and twilight started her search.

Gosman not knowing where to go or where he was or where the ship was. He found a cliff that over looked the village he had woken up in. he lied down and looked at the village he used his teeth on instinct just as he did to pick it up put the once his helmet on the ground in front of him facing the village and stared down at the village and saw the purple what were they called unicorn looking for something and gosman knew what they were looking for, they were looking for him. He knew that to avoid capture was to run but with nowhere to run to but maybe he just used that as an excuse.

Twilight saw a reflection at the top of the cliff and she knew that he was watching her she went into a back street out of his sight and used a teleport to behind him.

"Hello nice teleport did you do this to me change me to this form doom me to being a damn Pegasus for life to abandon the republic." the stallion ranted

"I was hoping for answers from you." Twilight said softly.

"Well you're not getting any goodbye." he stated firmly and jumped off the cliff twilight looked and saw him with his wings tucked in and plummeting strait for the ground at the last second pulled up sped up flying inches above the houses and moments later cause a sonic boom and rainbow dash came out from the clouds on an interception course and rammed him, he fell right out of the sky and hit the ground bounced and stopped, dash came to get twilight so they could find him.

Gosman crawled his way to the cottage he could see through his right eye and reached the door and hit it with his hoof and the door opened and a yellow Pegasus stepped out.

Fluttershy sleep was disturbed by a knocking on her door, she opened the door to a bloody white stallion who said: "don't… don't let them find me." He said weekly before passing out. Fluttershy pulled him inside her cottage and put him on the couch and started to bandage his wounds.

"He's gone." Commented dash.

"Must have escaped to the everfree forest well were not going to find him in the dark wait till morning we'll find him then."

Morning

"All right ponies we've got a missing white Pegasus who knows something about the events and I want to know what he's hiding." Twilight explained to her friends she had gathered.

Fluttershy looked at the ground unable to meet her friends gaze she who they were looking for and she was hiding him and she was unsure when ether she should tell her friends or not.

"Is he dangerous?" Fluttershy asked.

"We don't know." Twilight answered.

"I have some animals to take care of." Fluttershy answered and left to go back to her cottage.

"Okay all right lets get searching." Twilight continued and they all took off towards the everfree forest.

Fluttershy opened the door and walked in and closed the door behind her and looked at the couch and he was right where she left her still wrapped in bandages and unconscious. Looking at him she wondered what should she do.

"The droids are retreating." A marine yelled joyously into his COM.

"They're attacking the airlock we can't hold out much longer." A panicked marine reported on the radio in return.

"Every one get pressurized suits on now before the droids cut through the air lock and close as many blast doors as possible."

The alarm went off and that meant they cut through the airlock and the HUD list of people started to drop to kia and list of survivors was low and marksworth was thankfully still wearing his pressurized armour so he was fine and now that this had happened it snapped him out of his mental breakdown he stood up and looked around and saw empty cases of armour and a couple of marines hiding the corners crying in the suits and the entire room flashed once again and left a pony one for every empty armour.

"Dear god," murmured marks worth. "The clone."

And with that he took off for the air lock and found that the droids were gone and had escaped to the forest. "God damn it, can this get any worse."

Gosman woke on a couch wrapped in bandages he tried to move but regretted it he felt like once again light saber confetti.

"Oh my your awake." A new voice said. "What's your name Im fluttershy you're not here to hurt me are you?" Her voice lowering at the end.

"Im gosman and no Im not here to hurt you." Gosman said barely able to speak.

"Would you like something to eat," she asked

But the pain was already overpowering him and was drifting into unconsciouses.

Dash was running from the stick figures and sending the others back before the stick figures found them.

The only friend she hadn't sent back was twilight and she couldn't find her.

"I don't care I want the clone trooper back I know he's alive and I want him back." dash heard a voice yell

"But we don't have him." twilight yelled back

"I know you took him." The voice replied. "If you find him we want him back."

Dash came through the bushes and saw the creature with the featureless face.

It turned and saw dash.

"You." it said

"Twi there's stick figures chasing me."

One of the stick figures popped out from the bush and the creature pulled something from his waist and pointed it at the droid and pulled the trigger and droids head popped off.

"Dammit battle droids," the creature said

It jumped it to the bushes where the droid came from and ran towards the rest of the droids

"What were you talking about?" dash demanded

"The pony we found," Twi replied before heading back.

Gosman woke to the smell of something delicious cooking. And this time he didn't hurt as much so with an extra pain wincing with every step he made his way to the doorway to the kitchen leaning against the doorframe watching fluttershy cook something while humming. Fluttershy saw gosman and said. "Oh your awake, are you hungry."

"Maybe a little." Gosman replied with a wincing smile.

Fluttershy giggled. "Sit yourself at the table it'll be ready in minute."

"Smells good." Commented gosman.

"You're sweet." Replied fluttershy.

"I try."

"Soups done."

Since gosman was a soldier he only ate rations, which weren't made for flavor, which made the soup taste even better to him.

"Best soup I've had."

"Im not an expert cook." fluttershy said modestly while blushing at the comment

"I haven't met a better one."

"Oh please."

A knock came from the door in the next room.

"If you'll excuse me."

"It's no problem." Although he very much disappointed that their conversation was over.

"Hey fluttershy have you seen a white wing pony most likely injured." twilight asked

Fluttershy hated to do this but. "No I haven't."

"Okay but if you do please tell me."

"Okay I will." She said reluctantly.

"Bye fluttershy." she called as she trotted away.

Fluttershy returned to the table but a little sad.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't like lying to every one to hide you." Fluttershy confessed.

"I'll leave if you want." Gosman said standing up.

"No." fluttershy said a little panicked.

Sitting back down gosman said. "I think you like my company."

Fluttershy blushed.

Gosman gave a hearty laugh.

Fluttershy blushed even more.

Marksworth was killing droids by the hundreds but they kept coming and there was no hope of reinforcements because of the confusion and the loss of the command structure. He knew he was screwed but he figured that he if he was going down he was going down in style. He was taking cover behind a tree as lasers few at him. He kept enough fire to keep the droids from advancing but he didn't have the ammo or weapons to win. Twilight ran to marksworth's position. Marksworth mistake was that he let himself get distracted by Twi running to him and paid by getting shot in the leg and shoulder thankfully the armour had individual seals one for each limb so he was safe from the transformation but either blood loss or the droids would finish him for sure. Twilight finally reached him and saw his condition and another laser got him in his stomach.

Spewing blood on his visor with each word. "Get out of here. Run damn it."

Twilight teleported both of them to the hospital hoping the doctors could help him. He was now breaking into coughing fits it has been almost an hour and the doctors had removed the arm, leg and stomach pieces of armour and he was still bleeding and all of twilights friends had come to watch.

"None of you can help me in this form no time for me to get back to the ship." He unclamped his helmet and suspicious amounts of blood started to pour out he pulled off his helmet and threw to the ground and started to suffocate.

"What do we do?"

"What can we do?" The doctors argued?

He stopped moving and fell still. And like the others that had this happen to them as well he disappeared in a flash of light and the empty armour collapsed. And no one around knew what to do and what was about to happen the second flash left a stallion with the same injuries.

"Well, this will make it easier to fix him but I don't think this can be reversed."

"I rather doubt it," the doctors once again commented the doctors.

And they got to work fixing him and magic surgery.

Fluttershy seeing this snuck away to check on gosman and twilight taking marksworth's helmet and running to the cliff and placing his helmet beside the other one and was running back to the hospital before someone notice she was gone but she did notice that fluttershy was gone. She made an instant decision and followed heading for fluttershy cottage she heard questions being fired off from fluttershy to someone who was in there with her.

"What was the transformation like? Did it hurt? Was it like death cause it looked a lot like death! Tell me I want to know!"

A familiar voice gave a laugh and said. "Slow down one question at a time. Yes, it hurt it hurt more than anything in the universe. It was probably like suffocating in space like so many clones have before."

"Now I want to know about the clone's and space. Scratch that instead I want to know every thing about you and where you come from and the other people what about them and why does the air here suffocate your kind and…"

"Whoa hold it. One question at a time."

"Oh Im sorry Im just so curios of you and your life and everything about you."

"Slow down I'll tell every thing."

Twilight burst in the door and said. "So you'll tell her everything but you wont tell me." Twi looked at the Pegasus and saw that he'd been injured major. His right wing was completely covered and both his left legs were also completely bandaged and his front right knee too and his stomach, right flank destroying his cutie mark, left side of his face, and his back was bandaged all the bandages were bloody.

"You." He glared. "Your answer is that she helped me other than what you did."

Feeling guilty Twi didn't know what to say.

"Didn't mean for you to get hurt." Dash said from behind Twi.

Apparently dash and the others had followed her to fluttershy cottage as well.

"Wait what did you two do." rarity, applejack, pinkie pie and fluttershy demanded

"So you didn't tell your friends what you did."

Both looked at the ground in shame.

"Go on." Gosman prompted.

"We did save you from the forest."

"For your personal gain. Not for mine." He retorted. "And I would've woken up and gone back to the ship and maybe found a cure."

"Quite you're whining you're the first but you weren't the last and before you ask I wasn't the second." every one looked and low and behold it was marksworth with a doctor supporting him after saying just the one sentence he coughed up a blood ball the doctor started to say something but marksworth silenced him with a raised hoof I've heard you say it a million times but Imo fine. "I took a little blaster fire in a one man firefight there was no time to get to the ship and their pony doctors didn't know human biology and I was drowning in my own blood in my helmet. Im still spewing some once and awhile and the ship had the air lock cut through by the droids and the captains are still in shock."

"Okay now back to you." gosman said once again glaring at Twi and dash. Unfolding his wings to their full length and a sickening snap came from the right wing and the blood stain on it became fresh on began to widen gosman's face scrunched up in pain fluttershy rushed forward and pushed gosman down and took a needle, thread and scissors from a bunny and cut off the bandage and started to stitch. Marksworth started to run on his own to get to gosman but fell started to bleed and cough up blood. "He needs to get back to the hospital." the doctor reported.

Twi teleported all of them to hospital. With Marksworth and gosman in the hospital beds fluttershy still stitching up gosman. And the doctor still trying to help marksworth was having trouble he was coughing up more and more and more blood with each cough.

Dash looked and saw another bed with a large pool of blood hoof deep in a circle around it a pony janitor threw down his broom saying. "He's back I still haven't cleaned up his first mess," and the janitor left.

Is every pony seems to be getting hurt these days? One of the doctors commented.

Dash was hiding in the corner hoping that she could melt away and avoid the coming wrath of her friends Twi was distracted trying help with marksworth.

Applejack turned to dash and let out her rage. "How could ya do that to that feller there?" Pointing at gosman. "What did the poor feller do to ya'll."

"Nothing but I was trying to get him to land not crash."

"And that was a landing." Applejack continued.

"No, that was unintentional."

"But look what ya done ta him."

"I didn't mean to."

"The feller nearly died."

The ship was under complete disorder the ponies' unicorn's and Pegasus's all caused by the air on this blasted planet. And trying to get them organized was nearly impossible and if it wasn't impossible it would take hours and annoying repetitive reports of marks on what the hell was it… the flank. Life was currently hell for flowers because he was in charge. The search team for marksworth had reported that they found his helmet the inside filled with blood from the looks of things it had spewed from the mouth and pooled inside nearly drowning marksworth but with the lack of a bullet hole meant that he'd been shot in a lung most likely by the escaped droids and a section of forest was in control by droids and for some reason marksworth's helmet was placed beside gosman's and placed at the top of a cliff overlooking a village of ponies and from the re-con there are amounts of activity at one building and was designated the hot spot. And flowers now had a live feed of the re-con on the view screen. And new activity was amassing at the hot spot and two ponies came out carrying something out.

"Take my armour and place it with my helmet." marksworth said to twilight between bloody coughs. "Yes I know you placed my helmet at the cliff just put my armour with it when ether I die or not just put it there." and passed out from the pain. Twi and dash picked up the bloody armour eager to get away from applejacks wrath and carried it out to where the helmets were.

The duo of re-con odst's placed the helmets back where they found them and hid in bushes as they two ponies placed marksworth's armour with the helmet as though someone was wearing it. The blue one immediately went back but the purple one looked at it curiously at it for a moment then followed.

The re-con troopers went to the armour and looked at it and it had three blaster holes in it one in an arm a leg and one potentially lethal one without medical attention in the chest and blood was almost layered.

"Damn do you think he survived that?" commented re-con 1

"Id rather doubt it," replied re-con 2

"Cut the chatter." Depp interrupted.

"I want to see what's inside the hot spot. Flowers ordered.

"Yes, sir. Move out. And cut the live feed."

Every pony was grim when they heard that marksworth might not make it. Gosman's wing was stitched and put in a cast and bandaged again. He was up and about again talking with every one else and from he under stood about weather here nothing changed without it being intentional so it was weird that leaves had fallen out of a tree it was way too stealthy for a droid.

"ARE YOU UNSC OR REPUBLIC." Gosman called out.

All the ponies looked at him as though he was crazy but gosman knew better.

"Unsc." a voice replied from the bushes.

"Well, you don't do much good in the bushes come on out we'll make your job of watching us a lot easier."

"You know of us which means you're one of the victims," the scout observed.

"Took you longer to recognize me than marksworth."

"What's his status?"

"Too early to tell he's still unstable and the medics are still trying to stabilize him."

"Did the droids get him?"

"Took hits to his arm, leg and stomach. Just about drowned in his own helmet. Probably lost enough blood to kill him if he hadn't decided to change."

"To change?"

"Become a pony. He probably would have died from multiple reasons and pony kind could not help him he didn't have a human medic there was no times to get him back to the ship. It was his only choice. For me it wasn't a choice and that reminds me I still haven't forgiven you for that either," gosman said turning to dash.

"Didn't mean for all that to happen." She murmured.

"Sure you didn't." Gosman said sarcastically.

"No, I didn't mean for it," she yelled tears springing to her eyes and flew away.

The growing confusion of the re-con team demanded the question be asked. "What was that about?"

Long story short she caused me a great deal of pain.

"Ah your gosman I wondered what happened to you," re-con 1 stated.

"The injuries are part of round two." Gosman explained.

"Okay."

"Anyway what is the status of the ship?"

"Still under command structure loss and still growing confusion and the loss of the airlock seal has trapped those without pressure suits or changed them and organization is nearly impossible and rank is losing it's meaning it took an hour just to get the two of us organized."

"Wow you need to fix that problem."

"No really."

"Ponies and um… whoever you are," looking at the re-con team. "We've stabilized marksworth and stopped his bleeding and we think we fixed his internal bleeding but this time he's not moving were not risking another injury."

"Is he conscious?" asked re-con 2

"Not currently but he should wake within 24 hours. And you should be resting you don't do much good at anything if you don't heal."

"Oh alright. Ill head back to the ship and rest."

"Yea about that the main way back is crawling with droids that's why they only sent two scouts rather than a large amount of headhunter teams to neutralize the droids."

"I thought that was because of the disorganization."

"That too."

"You could stay at my place." Fluttershy offered meekly.

"Gosman you go with fluttershy we'll setup camp between the forest and this village we've got 20 automated mini turrets but will require Manuel programming to avoid friendly fire we've also got rations, tents, lights and sufficient weapons for a week long siege. So we'll be fine so where is the best place for our base."

"Actually it is right near fluttershy cottage there's a clearing it should be sufficient for your base."

"All right lets move out." and the two scouts started to run to their new base.

"Come on." Fluttershy said to gosman and the pair started to walk back to fluttershy cottage.

And every one else dispersed to their own accord.

Fluttershy opened the door and gosman walked in and fluttershy told him to get some rest. And went to go feed her animals.


	6. Chapter 6

It took half an hour to manually program the turrets and set up the rest of the camp.

"We've set up a camp and perimeter to protect the village and it's occupants from any droid raids but we would like a squad here to help, co-ordinates 7823," requested re-con 2 to the Marco.

"Copy that. Your reinforcements should arrive within the hour," the super cruiser's command replied.

"We'll hole up until you arrive," and cut the communication.

"Do you think we should have explained about marksworth and gosman." re-con 1 asked re-con 2.

"No. At least not yet."

"Why."

"Did you forget what happened to command when discovered the inhabitants do you really want to know what will happen when they find out that they just about lost their best soldier and he may still be sidelined if not from injuries from his new form. Sometimes it's just best to believe their dead men."

"I don't see how."

"Its just safer for all of us."

Gosman hated just sitting there with droids in the forest waiting to be scrapped but he was at fluttershy cottage stuck on the couch with his cuts and bruises on the mend he was itching to fight after all he was cloned to fight.

"Would you like anything." fluttershy asked interrupting gosman's thoughts

"Nothing at the moment."

"Are you sure," fluttershy persisted.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Well, I was going into town and was going to make sure that you didn't need anything before I left so are you sure you didn't need anything."

"Im fine now go," gosman said resisting a laugh.

"Alright. All right. But don't come crying."

"I wont"

"Bye." Fluttershy said and left to go to town.

"Might as well get some sleep." Gosman muttered to himself miserably. And put his head on his pillow and fell asleep.

"Damn it where are our reinforcement's," re-con 1 yelled to re-con 2 over the hail of blaster bolt's.

"They should be here by now." Re-con 2 responded. And another turret exploded.

"Oh for fuck's sake that was my last one." Yelled re-con 1.

"Suppressing fire we just have to hold them off until reinforcements arrive," re-con 2 ordered.

Re-con 1 pulled out his sniper rifle and raised it to take a shot but instead got him shot in the arm. Leaning against the barricade they had taken cover behind. Holding his arm he was screaming his head off into his COM in pain.

Re-con 2 tried to call for help again. "Man down we've got a man down I wants those reinforcement's now."

"Reinforcements have already left and are on their way just hold on they'll be their in minute's."

"Copy that over and out."

"Just holds on re-con 1 just hold on."

A giant wing metal creature that didn't flap it wings that spewed fire flew towards a cloud home at an outrageous velocity. Rainbow dash was watching it since it came out from the mountain and flew towards clouds dale it hadn't hit any clouds yet because it was supposed to be a cloud less day. The creature was getting closer and didn't seem to be slowing down or changing course dash started to get worried it might damage the town and the ponies started to panic. Ten minutes later the metal creature wing hit a column the wing sheared off right before the fire spewer's and started to spin and began to fall as the fire spewers dimmed the tail hit another cloud home and flipped end over end until hit a cloud square in the middle nose first and finally stopped.

The nose was sticking out the bottom of the cloud it hadn't fallen through because the wing's had hooked on the cloud. The only way to see inside was through the window on the front. And inside dash could see two of the creature's called human's we're unconscious in the seats and a closed door behind them blocking her view of the rest of the ship. Dash grabbed a cloud flattened it and placed under the ship and structured the cloud so it could support the ship. She went to the ship and loosened the cloud around the wing's and the ship started to move forward a little bit and stopped she loosened it a little more still not moving and loosened a little more still nothing she removed the cloud and the ship moved uncontrollably and hit the cloud harder than dash wanted and fell flat.

She circled it looking for a way in she didn't find any but she noticed the window was cracked but other than that there was no way to see inside and there was still no way inside the ship and no way to help it's occupants. The other ponies had come to look at the crash site. Dash was still looking in the window watching the two in the chairs one in the front moved and dash stumbled back. Still seeing movement inside she looked inside again and saw one had woken and was trying to wake the other one who was still unconscious after five minutes gave up and hit a button but nothing happened so he walked to the door and started to pry it open slowly it gave way and slid all the way open and dash saw a line of humans all unconscious strapped to their chairs. Dash tapped on the glass and the human looked up and sighed and started to check the others necks after checking all the other's neck's he walked to the cockpit and looked at the buttons and started to press them specifically and when he finished flashing red Lights turned on. And the human hit another button and the back part opened and he walked towards the opening dash flew around the ship to the back and found that it had opened and the human was testing the cloud to see if it could hold him aloft with one foot he walked to a locker and took out a jet pack put it on and jumped onto the cloud expecting to fall through but it held.

"I hate this planet every thing here seems to be out to get us," he muttered.

"You don't know that for sure. Maybe it's just that you're not from here," dash tried to make him feel better.

"I've got to get these men to the L. Z. That the re-con team setup before the droids kill them."

"Oh I know where that is."

"All right but how do I get there."

"I can push the cloud that your on there."

"Then let's get moving already."

"I'm starting to think that these aren't droids that are attacking us."

"What makes you think that?"

"The fact that whatever is attacking us is using actual military tactic's and that mean's the enemy isn't brainless," argued the re-con team.

The shadow of the enemy fell over the two.

"Maybe your right," re-con 1 said fearfully.

The pilot had woken up the marines and co-pilot and explained the situation to them. Within ten minutes they could see the base but no troopers. The cloud dispersed and the damaged pelican hit the ground the marines piled out and searched the perimeter.

"Guy's I think you should see this," a marine said a little scared.

"This had better be important."

"I assure you this is important," he said a little panicked.

Every one walked up and stopped when they saw the horror.

The bloody armour of the re-con team was there and it was ripped apart, the straps that held armour pieces were ripped in half by force rather than being cut, the helmets visors were shattered as though someone punched through it which would take ridiculous amount's of force, the body glove that was always worn under armour was shredded and torn to piece's. And the horror was completed with the message on the barricade it was written in blood the blood of the re-con team and it scared every one to the bone.

"Now let's leave the planet droids or no droids let's just leave I'd rather be a live coward than a regular dead soldier not even a dead hero just a dead soldier," complained a scared marine.

"Call in for an evac and tell captain flowers to get the Marco off this planet immediately," the pilot turned to dash. "Get and stay away from us or any one of us."

"Why. What did the message say?"

"You don't want to know. Now go."

A thought crossed dash's mind and it horrified her she turned to take off and she glimpsed the message and he was right it horrified her in a rush she flew for fluttershy cottage and when she arrived fluttershy was just walking in and fluttershy stopped cold dash saw what fluttershy had seen it was blood smears all over gosman's bandages stitches and casts were thrown all over the place and the message from before was repeated in blood gosman's blood this time. "Maybe marksworth." dash thought. And took off for the hospital when she arrived marksworth was gone same as gosman and the message repeated with a different number again in marksworth's blood.

"Captain we're losing contact with all troopers outside the ship and they say there's a message that repeats itself with a different number at every scene and the victims disappear."

"Are the engines fixed?"

"No sir."

"Captain we're starting to lose contact with squads inside the ship."

A thump came from the door to the bridge another came with a large inward dent and another and another. Flower's sat in his chair and turned it to face the door the guards were at the ready and the crew had taken out their pistols and taken aim but flower's knew it was hopeless the door gave way and hit the view port bouncing off hit the floor and stopped and flower's looked back at the hall and saw nothing but the torn uniform's and the blood writing a cryptic warning on the walls but no enemy he looked around still nothing then blinding pain.

Twilight had gathered her friends and had started to search all the area's they knew the creatures had been, in hopes that they would find something to help them find out what happened to the creature they had checked the hospital and fluttershy cottage and they were now checking the camp for anything but just like the other places nothing but the blood and the warning left on the wall.

"We should try the mountain since that was where this started," applejack commented.

"Alright." rarity agreed.

Dash climbing out of the crashed metal bird that contained just one of the smashed armour laid in pieces around the front area with the window.

"Hey dash," applejack called. "You know where the creatures came out of the mountain right?"

"Assuming that's where the explosion was, yes." Dash replied carefully not to once again enrage applejack.

"Good enough let's go" applejack replied.

After a long hike and reaching the mountain and climbing it without to many complaints from the others the found the giant hole in the mountain looked in and saw what used to be a large metal door bent inward and more destroyed armour and the message written again with another number on each and some of the lights damaged and flickering. A pedestal came to life showing one of the creature as the group walked past and said. "Destination if you would please."

All the ponies stared and then huddled together to decide what to ask.

"We should use some of the words that the creature's had used," suggested dash.

"Like what," replied applejack?

"Uh… um…" dash said turning to the pedestal figure. "Status," she said skeptically.

"Current a.i. mind meld is offline, all neural transponders are not transmitting, remaining armour systems are saying kia of all troopers within range of beacon receivers, security breaches have been reported through out the entire ship and activity level is at zero." The ponies looked at each other confused because they only understood part of it and didn't like it one bit.

"How about command."

"Bridge command selected, please head straight forward eighty-nine feet and turn right I will monitor your progress from the remaining cameras and speakers to make sure that you don't get lost in here."

"Okay," apple jack said skeptically but they still followed the directions the glowing figure told them and after close to an hour they saw a sign on the floor saying, bridge, and a double set door bent and destroyed and removed and on the other side was pitch black because the light's had been deactivated.

"Are... Are you sure we have to go in there." Fluttershy said shivering.

"C'mon lets just go, I've got a good feeling about this." Twilight said while illuminating her horn to see while walking into the room.

Every one else following saw the uniforms armour and blood every where they passed a chair centered in the middle of the room they passed another pedestal but this one didn't activate, pinkie being curios walked to the pedestal while every one walked past and looked at the window and saw all the dirt that had buried the ship.

The pedestal behind them flickered and another glowing figure came to life with pinkie pie rummaging in a repair panel on the side.

"Captain flower's I'm…. oh I'm sorry I didn't know flower's had left… oh, oh my, see what happens when I go offline every thing falls apart, I'm going to need all of you to follow the mass that has the neural transponders of all the crew." mind meld said while scanning all the records of the event's he missed. "Take these we'll need to stay in contact." while opening a rack full of headset coms. "The com's are adjustable so they'll fit just fine."

All the ponies fitted them on their heads with the directions of mind meld they were back in the forest hunting whatever had taken all the creatures that had crashed on equestria. Another one of flying robot's, sentinels Twi thought they were called passed overhead turned and flew down to them and spike sitting on the top of it said. "Hi this robot said that you wanted to see me."

"Yes, I've decided that this is now an emergency, the princess presence is now needed, send a message at once requesting that she come and help."

"Y'know it would help if you told me what was going on."

"No time, I need you to send the message immediately."

"All right fine, but I get to keep the flying robot right," asked spike.

"It's not mine, mind meld," twilight asked.

"You can borrow it for this mission," mind meld said.

"I guess that the best offer I'm going to get," and with that he started to write down a message using a quill and scroll paper and sent it by blowing fire on it and then using his borrowed sentinel he flew up into the sky and went to fetch the princess.

The group of ponies continued their way across the forest to where mind meld was directing them too.

"The target has stopped only sixty meter's from your position, I suggest proceed with caution," mind meld reported through the headset COM's.

They peeked through the bushes and a horrifyingly familiar cheery voice said "hello again."


	7. Chapter 7

To light vs. dark: the reactors alone would probably take up a lot of space to run shield's, eve's (glassers), engines, life support etc, etc., not to mention trooper barracks, landing bays, storage area's, the farms and that, training rooms for the rookie troopers, it would take a lot of space but your right it is a little big.

Mind meld was confused and concerned at the current situation because of the new creatures happiness and the ponies reaction to him, with his hundreds of sentinels creating bubble wall around the area with his view from his sentinels and the view from the cameras on the headsets the ponies had. Watching was unfortunately the only thing he could do because if the sentinels fired he could fry the ponies and he still didn't know were the crew was and this egomaniac was his best bet at finding them. The egomaniac snapped his fingers and a wall dividing two areas appeared and a crate appeared on one side and on the other an electronic cylinder that was where the neural implant transponders where coming from.

The maniac snapped his fingers again and all the sentinels went offline frustrated he sent a small mini drone armed with _a hologram projector and a hacking interface hoping to break into the device sending the transponder signal to find where he was hiding everyone.

"No, it just… It just couldn't be." Dash stuttered.

"Well, if it isn't the welcome back committee." Discord replied. "Well actually I can't say Im back because Im just one last little curse but this time I get a big win or a smaller win situation."

"But how, you're supposed to be a statue." Twi said.

"I am and Im not, but that's not important, what is important is your choice here." Discord said then snapped his fingers and a wall dividing two area's appeared and on the left side a box containing the element's of harmony appeared and on the right side an electronic cylinder. "Im sure you know what's on the left side but on the right side is the containment unit containing all your visitor's that were trapped here by yours truly. And now a few rules: #1 no help." He snapped his fingers and all the sentinels went offline and fell to the ground creating a perimeter of off lined sentinels around the clearing as though there was a force field surrounding the clearing pilling up on the outskirts.

"And #2 a classic one, no wing or horns. Now you can make your choice you could choose to sacrifice your new friends and stop me or you could save your friend's and I return with all element's in my possession."

"How could you be so cruel?" Rarity yelled.

"Halloo Im a replica of discord. What do you expect? A musical number." He replied.

"Ooh ooh I want one." Pinkie pie exclaimed cheerfully.

All the ponies looked at her blankly.

"Well, then let's get cracking, now make a choice cause Im pretty sure I want to be free from the element's curse that has imprisoned the real me in a statue." Discord said.

At the same time a holographic form of all the taken troopers appeared and the headsets speakers activated with specific people taken talking to them individually.

Fluttershy.

Gosman in clone form knelt transforming into pony form uninjured and then morphed into injured pony form while talking to her. "I know your going to say that you have to save us but the price is too high."

"But I…." Fluttershy started.

"You know that we will be fine if you take him down, but that will not stay the same if he is freed I know its a tough choice but it's the right one," although he didn't look so sure when he said that they were going to be fine.

Twilight.

Marksworth in human form knelt in front of twilight and his form morphed into injured human and then injured pony while he talked to her. "I know your curios about us, like our science, our autonomy, our society and our lives but that wont be problem as long as discord remains imprisoned."

"Patriotic words." twilight replied.

Dash.

The pilot that dash had met came to her but didn't morph between forms because he had only one form, his human form, kneeling to be eye level with dash he said. "I know that this is stressful time for all of you, but I know a fast flier when I see one and maybe ill be able to race you in longsword someday but in the meantime you'll have to save the innocent of this world, we'll be released eventually just not immediately."

"Okay." Dash said softly.

Applejack, rarity and pinkiepie.

Flowers addressed the three of them at once with Depp at his side he said. "We're all soldiers we all didn't expect to survive, but we will all be alive just not in our physical form and we all know that mind meld wont stop trying until he's released us because that is his programming, go for the one that has more hope than loss."

And they all faded as discord found and destroyed the device that mind meld had sent to find out where the crewman had been taken but not before it had completed its mission. All the ponies ran for the elements of harmony while discord was distracted and by the time he turned the elements had already activated and were already streaking toward him.

"What, noooooooo." he screamed as the elements destroyed (fake) discords very essence.

Becoming a little panicky when the cylinder disappeared with discord, right before celestia showed up looking like she was going to trample some-pony.

"Their gone." Twilight said shocked.

"What did you say?" The princess demanded.

"They're just gone." She repeated while the others just looking around like they cant believe what they were seeing, and then twilight realized what they were looking at, it was the fact that they were standing in a crater about two feet deep with almost the entire town of ponyville and the princesses guards standing around the edges, none of them knowing what was going on or what had happened and then twilight noticed that their headsets were gone, and then she noticed the wall and the sentinels were gone everything was gone, looking into her mentor's eyes she said. "Their gone, every last one of them, gone, i-i just don't know what to do."

"I wish to know what has occurred here." Celestia said softly. "All of you return to what you were doing," she commanded the ponies of ponyville. Celestia waited until all the ponies had left before she began to ask questions.

(Onboard the Marco)

"Are you sure that they went this way, scootaloo." apple bloom asked.

"Not as sure as I was an hour ago." She replied.

"Ugh, can we leave now this place give me the creeps." Sweetie belle said looking at another pile the mysterious looking torn armour and the blood smeared across the wall.

"What did I tell yah we should have listened to glowing thing?" Apple bloom retorted.

"Shut up will you, I think I can see something." Scootaloo interrupted pointing to a white winged pony with short cut black mane lying against a wall.

The cutie mark crusaders walked up to him slowly, after they saw him breath they all sighed after they had feared he was dead.

"I think I recognize him." Sweetie belle said.

"Well, then who is he." Scootaloo asked.

"He was the one that twilight and dash carried back to ponyville and then he disappeared after dash hit him out of the sky." She replied.

"No that wasn't him," a voice said from behind them, causing them all to jump and turn to see another pony exactly the same except for the bandages covering the majority of his body. "That just so happened to me. Mind meld has informed me of the unsc's protocol and why that protocol was established, so navigation will direct you ponies out and remember you cannot tell anyone that we are still here, especially the six that have the… what is it called, elements of harmony, oh and one thing put this in fluttershy cottage will you thanks and don't even let her know that it was you that put it their she'll ask too many questions." and he handed them a sealed paper envelope and then the glowing figure from before appeared and directed them outside and a door slid shut behind them as the glowing figure pointed to the village of ponyville with a sleeved hand and said "your home is that way." and then winked out.

"Lets follow the way the figure told us this time." Sweetie said.

"Oh all right." Scootaloo replied.

(Once again onboard the Marco)

Mind meld reanimated the troopers one at a time and for the most part right where they were taken to minimize disorientation when they woke up and the exception being the ones who were outside, mind meld materialized next to gosman and asked. "Are you sure that the note wont jeopardize the security of protoca…"

"I know what I'm doing." Gosman interrupted.

"That's just happens to be what Im questioning."

"Well, maybe you should stop questioning it then."

"My programming say's otherwise."

"What, you cant ignore your programming?"

"No, programming is the main essence of an AI"

"Huh, that's not the best design."

"It's the only design, gosman."

"Come up with a new one."

And gosman walked down the hallway away from mind meld's hologram.

"Interesting I'm going to have to look into that." Mind meld mumbled to him.

(Elsewhere)

The words explaining what had happened just came pouring out of all of them at the same time while celestia was trying to get them to talk one at a time she didn't notice a red eye glowing in the bushes just off the ground before disappearing into the forest.

(Crusaders)

While they walked back to ponyville they were asking each other their theory's and idea's on what happened, even the princesses guards who were sent with the townsfolk back to ponyville were at a loss to what happened which was worrying the entire town, the cutie mark crusaders after delivering the note to fluttershy place they joined the crowd unnoticed and of course they late for school but thanks to the distraction of what happened they were able to not get noticed.

As the year progressed, the class was still buzzing about the events to which no pony still knew anything, about several month's after the events they were in the last class of the day when a shadow covered the school and the entire town of ponyville most of the class was to busy to notice but this was most likely going to be the most important and tragic event in the history of equestria, all the ponies took notice of the giant figure that loomed in the doorway as it hefted a small single handed weapon with a knife fixed to each of the bottom corners into firing position, aiming for miss cheerily as she just stared horrified at what it was going to do.

(The month's prior)

It had taken two day's but mind meld had reanimated all the trooper's, republic and unsc to their natural state, mind meld has figured out that our air has the opposite effect that their air has although there is no physical difference that mind meld or any one can detect, right down to it's atomic structure, and the atmosphere layer also has every one puzzled, the only theory that currently makes sense is that the atmosphere directs energy from some where and funnels it towards whatever, in this case the ship and does something like we do to create an a.i. which would also explain the fact that received double signals from the Marco's collision beacon, one from the Marco were on and one from the original Marco, but that would also mean that the original us are dead, but hopefully that would delay the unsc coming here so they wont also get stuck here as well, and now that we have mind meld back online his subroutines during our brief time in the space around the world had detected that there was no star or Moon in the system and yet the planet was heated and lighted like there was one and now that they were in the planet they could see a moon and sun clear as day, which was also another thing in a list about this world of questions.

"Mind meld I want a report on the repairs to any and all damages and put extra detail to the engines report and I want someone at all times investigating the atmosphere layer, I want a way past it and get home."

"Although sir it just may be just like an a.i., one way."

Captain flowers sighed. "I know it's just that most of these marines have a family." And then began to read through the damage report.

(Elsewhere)

Celestia had managed to calm them all down enough to under stand little pieces but even they didn't know everything which left even more gaps and of course the guilt blurts from some of them.

"I got him injured." dash blurted

Celestia sighed, this being atlas fifteenth time she said that, and this discussion was getting nowhere fast,

"All right now where is this mindmeld…" as she sensed a presence and looked over to see a red glow disappearing off in the distance of the forest and took off after it, the ponies took a moment to shake off their shock of seeing the princess take off randomly in a direction before chasing after her and they later caught up to her at the base of the mountain where all this had started.

The princess just stared toward the top of the mountain and without taking her eyes off she told them to go home.

"But…" dash began but the princess cut her off and repeated. "GO HOME." In a more angry, louder and sincere tone. Twilight swallowed and turned around and walked slowly away in the direction of the town the other following slowly.

(Inside the Marco)

Mind meld figured that was a little too close they had spotted his offensive protector drone and chased it, but he managed to lose them at the outside of the Marco, and the problems were stacking the republic had demanded that they leave the planet but they couldn't cause of the atmosphere layer, the marines were getting restless and a loop of info was getting setup outside his parameters, evading his monitoring equipment and every thing, he was getting frustrated with the lack of control within the ship.

(The loop, time till 10-6 minutes, those involved: unknown, audio only)

Voice 1: "you know their coming, it was in the making when we left."

Voice 2: "just hope they wont back track."

Voice 3: "you really think they're not going to back track, there is to many unknowns not to."

Voice 4: "we all know its going to happen its only a matter of time which means it could take months to minutes for them to arrive and with the setup it could if were lucky be the unsc that arrives first."

Voice 2: "we should deploy just in case."

Voice 5: "we cant without getting caught, mind meld still has control over the airlocks."

Voice 1: "the sentinel hatches."

Voice 3: "only infantry can get through, but we could disable the sensors and get past."

Voice 4: "flowers wont deploy anyone until they arrive."

New person rushing in: "contact lots of contact there within the atmosphere."

Voice 1: "ally or enemy."

New voice "enemy."

"Shit."

"We told them this would happen, lets move, go, go, go, go, go, move it marine."

Author; its a little confusing but it will make more sense later (I make up the story as I go so yah) see yah next chapter when I fix the network error between the computer and fanfiction and it only my computer that does it. Frustrated sigh, hah hah I got it working for a total of ten minutes, ill upload this next time I get it working


	8. Chapter 8

Okay im skipping parts but I really want to get to a specific part

Time till: 2 weeks

As the months progressed the situation worsened onboard the Marco, insubordination was rampant, thievery was becoming a problem, and the mystery information was still a mystery to mind meld, unless something was done their might be a riot and some one was going to get injured in the process, flower figured out that the only way to stop it was to leave and go home but the engines were still damaged and no way to get past the mystery layer of atmosphere.

(Defensive cloaked sentinel drone f786-h374)

As the drone circle the ship it came across an odd drawing in the dirt, the drone scanned and copied down the drawing and coordinates and sent it to mind meld, continuing on its way it detected a presence, wait two presences in the bushes watching, mind meld took notice and scanned the bushes using the ships sensors he scanned them learning that they had an invisible infrared atomic link attaching the bigger one to the sun and the other's tracked in a direction that mind meld guessed was to the moon, mind meld also guessed that they drew the map in the dirt and he looked at the coordinates and realized that it's the same place he had managed to lose the pony that chased the drone months ago, he took a closer look at the drawing and saw that it was a 2D map of this world with a sun at a specific place, details were very specific right down to each building, with a star and moon on big building and in that moment mind meld realized formulated what the information being kept from him and the crew was and he formulated a plan and how to stop them and that plan violated a lot of flower's order's which was unfortunate but was necessary and with he chose marksworth for this mission and sent the request for him to go,

(Marksworth)

He had just been informed of the mission and sent out to complete it one thing that was weird about the mission briefing was that it didn't have the captain's signature and that his new odst armour wouldn't have his name on it, his voice would be disguised, and even his iff tag would be disabled, he would be cloaked using two not one but two cloaking sentinels and he would venturing into a city but not just any city but the most likely place to be the capital of this planet, and then the most complicated part would begin, but he had to leave now if he was going to arrive the time mind meld had specified, he put on his armour and met the sentinels at the hatch and noticed something odd, there were no guards, not even a living thing in sight, "curios," he thought and began to question whether mind meld was stepping out of his programming bounds, which was impossible but he couldn't help but think and stepped out the airlock into the open space of the mountain and jumped.

As he fell he had flattened out with arms and legs spread he knew the sentinels were on both sides of him to save hem in case the jet pack failed, although he still felt the rush of adrenaline and a strange sense of calm he hit the thrusters and hit the ground with a little less jarring than a drop pod, he got up and saw the sentinels come cloak him and themselves he started to jog to the mountain side palace, he arrived at a gate hours later and saw that there was a draw bridge farther on luckily the gate was open and the drawbridge was down but there were still guards and a small town bustling with activity, the guards were easy they were off to the side but the town would be a problem, but thankfully he managed to get through with only nudging a few ponies but they would only look and not see any one and think they imagined it, unfortunately marksworth was looking back he tripped over what looked like a 8 year old pony and hit the ground sending up a cloud of dust, luckily the cloaking would cloak the dust that would cover him but they might see a spot where the just disappears and the alarm in his helmet told him that the cloaking sentinel's hadn't compensated fast enough and he was visible for 24.66 seconds and that he cover might be compromised, and it didn't help that the kid screamed when he was tripped over and all attention was on the kid who was getting back up and looking around for the figure that was marksworth which was invisible again, but that meant he and whole bunch others had seen him, so he made a run for the drawbridge and his helmet warned him that he revealed himself for 2.45 seconds, and there was panic starting and armored guard's were looking around for a target to stop from getting inside but the sentinels were already cloaking him and keeping up and he made it inside.

(Celestia and Luna balcony palace canter-lot)

"Are you sure someone is going to show, cause im really tired and I don't want lose sleep over a wild goose chase?" Luna asked.

"They'll show just you wait," celestia replied.

"Princesses a black figure has been spotted just outside the palace before disappearing, possible teleport," a guard reported running into the room.

"Teleport, HAH, that's a good one," a metallic and obviously fake voice said as a clad in black figure materialized next to the guard. "We have cloaking tech but not teleporting tech." as it motioned to the sentinels hovering above his head.

"You figured out the map," Luna said in 'royal voice'.

"Luna." celestia scolded. "Use your normal voice."

"But what about the whole…"

"Don't start this again."

The almost entirely metal figure laughed, and started to say, "You remind me of my… back to business what do you want."

"We wanted to welcome you to our humble nation and to open diplomatic relations," celestia replied.

Huh, it grunted. "Is that it?"

"Why is there something else," Luna asked?

"Mind meld sends a warning, prepare all warrior's soldier's, anyone who can fight, and keep someone prepared to evacuate anyone from any city on a global scale." And walked over to the edge of the balcony and stared out at the view of many cities until his eyes locked on ponyville for a second and then turning to the mystery mountain.

"What will we be fighting?" Luna demanded.

"The same non-parasitic thing that nearly wiped my species clean from this galaxy twice." and with that he jumped off the balcony edge and fell down the cliff belly up his arms crossed like a mummy legs straight and about half way down he flipped and unfolded his arms stuck them out when the sentinels grabbed him and they all disappeared, although celestia didn't see where they went she did know where they were going, she turned to the guard who was still standing the mouth hanging open staring at where the figure had jumped, "I want two guard's at every city, town and village."

"Ma'am"

"You heard me."

"Yes, ma'am."

(Twilight, time till: 8 hours): the setup

Twilight had almost forgotten the incident until she heard about celestia's order that every city, town and village must have two guard's in it at all time's, now twilight was getting worried all over again and the town was noticing it to, she went out to ask for hundredth time the guard's knew why the princess ordered this, but the answer was the same: no pony knew, so twilight went to see apple jack to see if she could calm her nerves, twilight was still embarrassed about the time she was going to be late with her friendship report and went crazy over it and caused the entire town to fight over a doll, she hoped she would keep her sanity intact, on this one.

(The library/twilight's house: time till: 4 minutes, deployment in progress.)

The headhunter team had just ran over kilometer to get to their designated sniper positions, although they knew what was coming, they didn't get why flowers had deployed only minimal infantry, snipers and headhunter teams (special ops duo) and just got every pilot marine soldier and vehicle ready for deployment rather than just deploy them right of the bat, they had to hurry it was only a matter of time until they dropped from orbit and all hell would break loose and the minimal amount of troopers would only slow it down, but luckily their job wasn't to stop them, it would be to evacuate the ponies from compromised areas, and mind meld had recently figured something out that revealed that they couldn't go home, mind meld had sent out a remote cloaked longsword and it passed through the atmosphere no problem but revealed that the whole solar system was one big sphere like the inside of a shield world except that instead of a planet it was a solar system wit sun a moon and stars projected on the sphere's surface which was impossible because before they arrived on the planet there was no sun no moon and guaranteed no sphere but there was suddenly a lot of activity visible through the barrier so flowers deployed all space to ground vehicle including an experimental idea of attaching odst drop pod's to the back of pelican and then deploying them from orbit that way and then flowers deployed the odst pods with shield breakers designed to break ship/planetary shield for boarding ships docked on a planet, this was getting better and better, there a fleet of forty thousand five hundred longsword's parked in orbit and hiding behind the fleet of longsword's was a fleet of shortswords ready to bombard any thing planet side and then behind that was all fifty hundred thousand pelicans, 5 thousand were deployed with the odst pods and the rest with twelve marines a pelican and mixed in the pelicans was the republic version of a dropship, the LAAT's that had three different versions, they were deployed with sixty seven infantry transport's filled to the top with clones, twenty five cargo carrier's for the most part carrying SPHA's (self propelled heavy artillery), and thirty six heavy AT-TE carrier's, all loaded and ready to deploy, but the timing for deployment would have to be deployed with perfect timing but the troopers and clones in the dropships and odst pods were getting bored and impatient the pilots were using micro bursts for station keeping but even they were getting impatient.

"There's a good sniping position, you take that one ill take this one," Lorenzo said breaking bix's thought's about what was happening.

Bix checked his voice muffler to make sure it was on and replied using the radio. "All right remember snipe the one that are the most danger to the ponies."

"We just got a two page report of reasons why were supposed to do that and then we had to read it because the computer tracked our eye movement's, how could I forget," he replied.

"Just making sure."

"Well, your making sure is annoying."

'CRUNCH'

"Damn these pony sized doors," Lorenzo cursed.

"There designed for ponies among other types of creatures like the dragon that was grumbling about that he didn't wan to do work as he picked up the books up and put them away, it wasn't hard to sneak past but the problem was that he heard the stairs creak as the head hunter team walked up and he was now nervous and alert, once and awhile looking up the stairs and at where they were stationed, Lorenzo thanked god for the cloaking sentinels that concealed the both of them, although on this planet their luck just seem to abandon them altogether, an owl was flying by and turned to go in the window and just as it entered it collided with bix's cloaking sentinel and fell and hit the ground next to the sentinel as it landed upside down unable to flip itself back over, Lorenzo receiving a warring on his heads up display that bix's cloaking sentinel was no longer cloaking bix, Lorenzo turned and sprinted for him revealing himself until his sentinel compensates, he grabbed the cloak sentinel with one arm and with the other he tackled bix to cloak him as well, the problem with this was that his cloak sentinel could only cloak the both of them for 1.23 minutes, his helmet had a countdown timer in the corner of his helmet on how long before the sentinel over heat's, the headhunter team's only hope was that the owl and dragon would figure that they imagined the whole thing or better yet weren't even looking but no such luck the dragon had dropped the books he was carrying and staring open mouthed at what he just saw as the owl had stood up and was doing the whole 360 degree turn with his head to see where bix and Lorenzo had gone but they were once again invisible, but unfortunately once again their luck must lying under a tank some where because the dragon sneezed and the resulting fireball of course hit the remaining sentinel and deep fried it instantly with gusto, revealing Lorenzo with a still pinned bix underneath,

"You can get off me now you big lummox." bix growled,

"Sorry."

"Who are you," spike asked.

"We are your imagination, you never saw us." Lorenzo tried.

"Seriously, you're seriously going to try that," spike replied unimpressed.

"Couldn't hurt." Lorenzo replied shrugging.

"All right here's the deal we are a headhunter team, deployed to stop the…" bix started but was interrupted by a tell tale noise, a screeching rather than a soft hum, bix, Lorenzo, spike and owliciose all looked to see the bane of the unsc the most corrupted religion in the galaxy, the most dangerous thing in the galaxy (except the flood) souring above descending and rising and spreading out, "the coming of the third covenant." bix finished looking at the huge armada descending down over in the distance and the banshee's and spirit and seraphs closing in on ponyville.


	9. Chapter 9

(Note: if anyone has noticed that mind meld is beginning to exceed his programming.)

Fight or cower — live or die — run or stand — kill or pacify, that is your choice but ours is fight so those who wont don't have to.

We wont cower, we wont die, we wont run, we wont pacify, we will fight down to our last breath, we kill the next enemy, we will stand to the last man, victory is the unsc way.

(Zero hour orbiting fleet.)

"Longsword you clear the path for the shortswords and destroy all single ship's shortswords you take the capital ships, gunship's take out the surface troops, republic attack cruiser's will provide support and additional reinforcement's, positions cleared and secured will have a fire base set up in it." mind meld relayed order's.

(Pilot)

The pilot of longsword 4121 couldn't get his mind together for the initial assault and it didn't help that they put two clone's and a odst armed with nothing more than their jet packs and their rifle's, the pilot didn't catch their names but although he thought knew the odst at least from somewhere, as the all the fights drop ships and gunship's raced down to the battle field the pilot caught some thing on his radar, it was a small fleet of banshee's, spirit's, and seraph's headed away from the battle, the pilot gripped the controls even tighter and floored the accelerator throwing the clones and odst into their seats, as he chased down the small enemy fleet.

(The school)

The giant figure was about to swing at miss cheerier when its head exploded in a shower of blood, brains, and skull fragments, the class was horrified,

"Every pony to applejack's apple cellar." Appleblossom yelled, "It should be safe there."

And the entire class panicked and jumped out the windows in their rush to the apple cellar in hopes of safety.

(Longsword 4121)

As the pilot arrived where the small fleet had deployed he found that the village was almost entirely evacuated and that they for the most part had gone into a cellar on a farm in the country, the reason the covenant hadn't gone after them yet was because of two odst's and six ponies and several animals in a hollowed out tree in the town, the odst's iff tags were active and he recognized the name's.

"Hey, helljumper jump off when I pass over the tree those odst's aren't going to need the help, and tell them, im sorry I was late," the odst looked at him and then jumped.

"Now, clones im going to drop you off at a cellar on a farm there is civilian in there protect them until reinforcements arrive, there a beacon in the locker to the left till lead the unsc to you position,"

"Yes, sir." And the clones saluted and jumped to protect the ponies the ponies in the cellar.

The pilot now alone in the cockpit said. "All right you sons of bitches today seem like a good day for you to die." And shot down the banshee ahead of him and did a barrel roll to avoid two that he had on his tail.

(Bix and Lorenzo, time: zero hour.)

Bix and Lorenzo hadn't said one word to the ponies, after the banshees and spirit's and seraphs had shown up, the six ponies came rushing in to find bix using his sniper rifle to keep the convent away from civilians and Lorenzo using a jackhammer to take out the banshees, they didn't know where the town's ponies had gone but they didn't really care because the scanners hadn't detected any ponies in town, dead or alive, and the whole situation was getting awkward because if their helmet's systems deactivated and their helmets depolarized they would be recognized, and the same goes for their real voices, so they didn't even talk, but the odds of them arriving in the house that all these ponies would arrive in, it just wasn't freaking fair, Lorenzo used his last jackhammer and dropped the launcher and picked up his sniper rifle and began to join bix in trying to keep the covenant hordes away when they spotted another odst approaching via jet pack. His iff tag was off and the armor had no mane tag that they could spot, the only thing that kept them from shooting was the unsc logo over his heart and on the jet pack.

When he crashed through what remained of the window he did a barrel roll and came up standing and looked at the ponies and then at the two odst's, he touched a button on his arm and his iff tag activated, and surprising the both of them it was marksworth.

"We need to move, they're advancing on us and the cellar where we believe the rest of the town is hiding." Marksworth said in an obviously fake voice.

Applejack and rarity perked up at hearing this news, and said, "sweetiebell." "Applebloom." they said one after the other, while twilight scrunched her eyebrows together in thought,

"Most likely, or they escaped the town, there is no pony in this town, dead or alive." Marksworth replied he then pointed at twilight and said, "Teleport us on the other side of the army, we'll make the rest of the way on foot."

Twilight knew something was up as soon as it spoke in an obviously fake voice, but now she knew for sure that something was up, but she did what it told her and they were on the other side of the army currently laying siege to her house, twilight looked back to wonder if her home would survive, but she turned and followed the other's in the direction of applejacks farm.

(The clone's: ser and gosman)

They kept pouring blaster fire into the brute pack advancing in the field, but they kept coming, stepping over their dead comrades, they didn't even return fire, when the last brute dropped thirteen minutes later it became creepily quiet and they could see marksworth several ponies and other odst's, but commander ser knew a Spartan saying that he learned from the unsc, "the last few steps were the most dangerous." and he turned to see a brute mid-swing with a modified spiker where its dual knives were replaced with plasma ones, ser didn't even have time to open his mouth before the spiker impacted and left two gashes down his helmet starting just above the right eye going down through his chest plate and stopping at his left thigh where it had exited the armor, the cloth between the armor and skin, and the flesh underneath, and then the brute struck with is hand and grabbed the armour the cloth and the skin underneath and threw him at the cellar door and unloaded his spiker into him.

(Fluttershy)

When she the two figure's clad in white, she would have called out gosman if their was only one but their was two and the other yelled "SER" and blasted with blue lasers until it dropped but it was too late for the one that had been slashed he was no longer moving and there was too much blood dripping off of him for him to survive but just thirteen seconds after they had crossed the field the cellar door opened a little bit, but it was enough jostling for the white figures helmet fell through and immediately the cellar door slammed shut again but at least they could now see the two pelicans descending from the sky and when they landed six odst's ran out to secure the area except for the single remaining surprise brute jumped on the trooper to the right, and landed on his leg snapping it, but before the brute could do anything else the other odst's opened fire,

"Applejack get the ponies on the pelican and get them out of here." the still disguised marksworth said gesturing at the cellar door.

(The cellar time till -15 minutes)

There was yelling and explosions out side the cellar and the only light was from a lamp hanging from the ceiling which cast a lot of shadows but the scariest part was when there was a thump against the cellar door and an armada of those yellow hot metal sticks impaled themselves in the one door and blood started to drip from them almost immediately and was pooling under the door and the only one that didn't back away was scootaloo who standing at the edge of the pool of blood looking up at the door, not only was scootaloo brave enough to just stand at the edge of the blood pool she was brave enough to walk around it and opened the cellar door next to the one that dripping blood, she only opened the door just a crack but it was enough for a replica of the t-frown visor that dash brought in with the mystery pony, except this one had parallel gashes going down the helmet starting just above the right part of the t in the t-frown going down on a slight angle to the left and leaving the helmet, it was bloody to the extreme as it rolled down the steps of the apple cellar towards the crowded ponies but it stopped in the pool of blood and scootaloo had already slammed the door shut and for what seemed like hours no pony even moved but the explosions and bang's continued outside until there was a knock on the cellar door and it was pulled open from the outside and in looked applejack to see scootaloo looking right up and then see the entire town of ponyville hiding in the corners, "thank celestia." she muttered and then said "c'mon they are going to take us to canterlot." and left the cellar and ran onto something of unknown design and gestured for the rest of the town to follow, they did but they did very slowly looking at the black figure with his arm carrying another black figure that's leg was twisted at an unnatural angle, toward another metal beast of the same design but this one had the red cross insignia painted on the side, and two more of the black figures trying to get the body of the figure that's helmet fell into the cellar off the door and another two were standing at the edge's of the metal beast with one beside applejack and the other five ponies and spike at the front, just standing there with their weapons held in one hand pointed down and the other hand holding onto the side of the metal beast, the ponies piled inside slowly but they did and when they did the black figures sat down with their legs hanging out the back with their weapons raised looking for target's outside the metal beast but the most eventful part was when a small child slipped and fell out the back but the one black figure jumped and wrapped his arm's around the pony and the other black figure tried to grab him but he was already too far down and they disappeared by a road, the black figure that remained put his pointing figure to where his ear would be pressing a button and looked like he was having an argument with someone.

(Lorenzo, the odst on the pelican)

"Mark the coordinates and we'll have the warthog convoy that's currently retreating from ponyville to canterlot check it out." Mind meld said.

"Unless you find him he's easy prey for a brute pack." Lorenzo replied,

"We are currently repelling a planetary invasion with no reinforcement's, our resources are stretched to their limit, and we can't waste any." Mind meld replied. "Good day Lorenzo" mind meld finished and cut the transmission.

Lorenzo kicked the wall of the pelican and then looked at the mother of whose child had fallen out of the pelican, when he saw her face of horror and sadness all his worries for bix dissolved and his worry for the mother had kicked in.

(Bix)

He didn't know what he was thinking when he jumped after the child pony, but before he knew it he had his arm protectively wrapped around the pony and falling hundreds of feet with no jet pack, no help and no rescue, but there he was falling almost as fast as a odst drop-pod from high in the air, not his best decision but if the child pony lived it would be enough to redeem himself in his own self conciseness, all of it.

(Flashback 1, event: the last battle of the second covenant. location: the human colony world: Juno, in the Normandy system)

Bix was holding onto the pelicans seat while the rest of his body flapped in the air as it fell from the sky he managed to look over to Lorenzo having the same problem but the rest of his squad had long ago fallen out of the pelican and fallen to their deaths but they had managed to hold on but bix could see the ground closing in on them through the open door to the what was once the cockpit and then they crashed it was a hard hit but bix managed to stand and radio command and they immediately gave him another mission to set off a bomb that had timed out in a hotel building where the covenant had stationed a command centre.

(Bix, zero hour)

Bix's proximity radar sounded telling him that he was nearing the planet's surface, but he hit the squelch, he wanted his last moment to be quiet.

(Flashback 2,)

Bix was in the sewers with Lorenzo making their way under the hotel and cut through to the hotel basement they climbed through and took a look around but they were running out of time, the sensors they left in the sewers were picking up contacts closing in on them, the sewer patrol, but they found the bomb in a supply closet and attached an extra six frag grenades and two kilograms of c-12 with a timer and a remote detonator in case the timer failed again, and they ran upstairs as plasma rained upwards through the hole into the basement cleanly missing them but enough to get them running and when they reached minimum safe distance they could see the civilians climbing out the windows and trying to get away but bix knew they wouldn't even get on the ground before the bomb went off and he watched mortified that he rigged the bomb that would kill these innocent people but he watched as the building disappeared in a mushroom cloud, but bix turned and walked away."

(Bix zero hours.)

Bix had hit the ground that's all he knew, but he could barley see through his visor cause it was blood smeared and he also knew that his armour had lost all power and his helmet had obviously depolarized and anyone could see his face but that wasn't his concern his concern was if the pony was safe but he could barley see or move but he felt something trying to push him so he looked and it was the pony, there was barley a scratch on him but that was because bix had become a living shield but he didn't know how much longer before he became a dead shield, but he waited in the ditch he landed in and felt a warm liquid touching his entire armour, "im going to bleed out, I wonder if anyone will find the pony

(Warthog convoy alpha 4, consisting of 7 hog's)

"Holy shit one of the marines yelled as the banshee trailing them fired off it last shot before they finally hit the ugly basterd and they floored the accelerator's before more banshees showed, but about halfway to canterlot they spotted a pony on the side of the road, luckily they had standing orders to protect and evacuate any pony's and the convoy stopped in covering position's and the marine was about to grab the pony when he spotted a reflection off of something metal and the marine went to investigate and he looked down and yelled. "MEDIC, we need a medic." a field medic came up expecting a pony casualty but when he saw it was an odst he checked to see if he had a pulse, and the medic was in luck he had one. "Holy shit." one of the marines yelled from a warthog turret when he saw the odst being pulled from the ditch and laid in the back an empty hog and the medic jumped in with him and the pony followed in and the convoy took off heading for the firebase in canterlot. The marine in the passenger seat looked back at the odst and saw that his helmet had depolarized and you could see the blood practically covering the entire visor and blood was also oozing out of various area's of the armour and the medic was having trouble keeping him stabilized and the pony probably not old enough to even talk kept nudging him with his front hoof, and then they received a non-coded transmission from mind meld, because they got out of range of the COM jammed, it said. "Marine warthog convoy alpha 4 there is a lost odst and pony along west road beta, secondary priority."

"Way ahead of you mind meld, odst and pony recovered, odst is critical, pony is uninjured, continuing along predetermined path west bound heading towards canterlot firebase." the lieutenant replied.

"My apologies, warthog convoy alpha 4, please continue onward, alerting doctors at canterlot firebase now." mind meld replied cutting the transmission.

Author: now the fun begins


	10. Chapter 10

Unsc carrier billiage:

"Captain scan's are again inconclusive, there nothing in the camera systems." the ship AI Boris replied

"Then how the hell is it there."

"It's not there, that's what's scary."

"Then what is going on?"

"Captain if I may, I have theorized that they are in a dimensional drift and we are at the receiving of what's like a transmission and the Marco when transferring split in two dimensional versions and this Marco is like the receiving antenna of a transmission and their Marco is sending, but the crew's bodies split but their mind's couldn't and the mind's went with the other Marco so this crew is dead."

"So all this is actually happening?"

"Or has happened, there could be a delay in the receiving."

"I want data recorder's watching everything that happens"

"ONI has ordered that the moment this started, so that is already done."

"Boris isolate all the star configurations and calculate where they are in real space, if there's a match send ONi the coordinates and take us there."

"Done, match confirmed, sending ONi coordinates, slipspace drives active."

"Let's see where the Marco has been."

And they arrived at the edge of a planet with no sun no moon and no sphere, but there was the mystery atmosphere and the planet matched all the records but where the Marco was positioned there was no mountain just a hole in the ground that fit the size of the Marco, there was no evidence that the unsc or the covenant had ever been their but zooming in they could craters and hole from missiles and plasma but not even a destroyed warthog left over, but there were destroyed trees and they could even name the missiles from the craters, but not even a single piece of metal was left behind from a vehicle, but the scanners detected the inhabitants rebuilding their civilization.

"Looks like you were right, Boris, there is a delay on the receiver, but what id like to know is what happened."

"Captain im receiving a loop transmission, there is no sending area it's just there."

"Interesting, play on main screen."

The ships main screen winked to life to show captain flower's holding onto a railing just in the view of the camera as severed gas hoses sputtered around all over and crewman ran around tapping at consoles as they sparked in reply making them flinch away and trying to do repairs as the ship shook and rumbled and then the damage control yelled from the back round, "sir, shield's are down were being torn in half." and flowers looked at the camera and yelled "to any ships that enter this system stay away from the planet and anything in this system, leave immediately," and the camera's pedestal must've broke because the camera swung wildly but they could still hears flower's voice, "it's too late for us. But their is-" and the transmission cut and than began again, but captain bill saw something and had Boris fast forward to where the camera swung around and hit pause, the camera was pointed out the view port through the orange mist he could see a covenant ship that was split into multiple pieces and was suspended right down to amour plating And single ships, and captain bill went ahead 13 more frames before the view port was in view again and saw that the reinforced glass was cracking. Starring into this he said, "Holy hell. What could have done that?"

And borris replied "unknown."

"Send ONI this they'll want to see it."

"Transmission sent."

"Now then flowers lets see what happens when, launch an automated longsword."

"Aye, captain."

(Back to zero hours)

Lorenzo was overly worried about the mother because she was becoming more and more distraught by the minute so when Lorenzo got the transmission that the pony and bix were alive he went straight to mother and pulled her along not telling her a thing, but she was so distraught that she didn't care she just kept looking up at Lorenzo, and once he looked back, depolarized his helmet and smiled which only confused her as he re-polarized his helmet, and stood out in front of the firebase and looked down the road and eventually saw the warthog convoy but the mother still didn't see her child until the lead hog stopped at the entrance and several marines jumped out carrying a stretcher with bent and warped black metal on it that was barely recognizable as they ran for the firebase Lorenzo stopped at the entrance and a familiar unharmed pony tried to follow but was stopped by Lorenzo and he picked him up and carried him to his mother whose expression a mixture of astonished, over-delighted, happy, and surprise. Lorenzo put the pony in front of her and turned and ran for the firebase to see how bix was doing, and the pony again tried to follow but was stopped by his mother who hugged him fiercely, crying from being so overjoyed.

(Bix)

Bix was only half conscious but he could still see the marine in the vacuum suit as the sky above turned to metal and darkened until it brightened and then darkened and then a white room brightly lit and heard a voice but it sounded wrong like it was distant and underwater at the same time, but there was no pain, no feeling's, no emotions, just peace, but the voice kept him from falling asleep in this wonderland, it felt like an alarm clock interrupting a long and peaceful sleep but there were other voices too but this one tore through the clouds of peace unlike anything else, he tried to look and see the owner of the voice but there was nothing there but emptiness but when it all turned black and the voice was coming into focus with the rest.

"-Ming out of shock."

"Adrenaline shot's."

"We're the only two survivor's from Juno, remember," the voice cut in?

"Flash clone a kidney, he needs a new one."one of the distant voices followed.

"Stabilizing."

"You remember that don't you, that's why you jumped isn't it, you were always more empathetic than me."

"Need some replacement blood here."

"C'mon bix you wouldn't leave me by myself would you."

"What the?" the one doctor commented when he looked at the pulse, because it went from erratic too just suddenly stable.

"Is that a no?" Lorenzo said sarcastically looking at the pulse rate.

"I think its miracle." A doctor replied.

"No." Lorenzo said matter oh factually. "It's just bix's way of saying thank you."

"Who's he thanking?"

"Me." Lorenzo relied and left the operating room.

"What for."

"Too long of a story to tell."

"Damn odst's, they leave the hospital and two minutes later, and look their back. All right were done here put him in recovery and well take the next patient." The lead doctor ordered as they wheeled bix out of the room.

Bix now fully aware of his surroundings became aware that the marine pushing the stretcher was not wearing his helmet nor was he.

"Where am I.?" he croaked.

"Canterlot firebase."

"How-how did I get-."

"Try not to talk to much, I found a pony on the side of the road as we pulled out from ponyville and stopped and found you in the ditch next to him." He interrupted.

And all the leftover adrenaline and excitement from falling from the pelican made him jump from the stretcher to the marines protest but only to have his legs give out underneath him, and the marine caught him and put him back on the stretcher as the pain blinded him.

(Real time)

As the longsword neared the atmosphere the orangey layer began wave and shift and move and eventually clump together and reach out intently towards the longsword and when it grabbed it, it just held it there for a minute before it broke a wing off and it then disappeared in a flash, the crew on the bridge watching kind of starred where the longsword used to be, captain bill broke the ice, "holy shit! Borris scan the atmosphere, is there any anomalies and any idea where the longsword went."

"Negative, no anomalies where the orange layer is, actually scan indicates that there is nothing there at all. And the longsword transponder is- wait give me a minute to confirm this."

Bill was concerned, whatever could cause a detectable pause in an AI like Boris would have to be confusing, complicated and sometimes impressive.

"Captain, the signal is coming from over six thousand different spots, annualizing the sending locations now."

"What in blinding hell."

"Captain, the signal is coming through slipspace pores, a dimensional version I'd expect." Mused borris.

"Can we access them?"

"Negative nothing has ever been able to access them in recorded history."

"See if you can figure out a way to access it, maybe the crew of the Marco is still alive."

"considering that in hundred's of years we still haven't figured out how to access them, and even if we get through we might never find them or their dead."

"It's called hope, Boris."

(Zero hour.)

It was only an hour after bix almost killed himself but he was back in the command centre in uniform but he still had to use one crutch to steady himself as the command crew worked at the control panels, monitoring the enemy's movement's, bix had hobbled himself over to the window and looked out over the vast fields and forest's of this world with Lorenzo standing next to him in amour, when a cloaked phantom uncloaked at full speed and they saw three rouge elites and two brute's jump out the bottom of the phantom and smash through the windows of the fire base as the trooper's and officers inside ran for re-breather's and to get away from the windows but bix being slow on his crutches and Lorenzo being too stubborn to leave bix behind were too close to the windows when they came through and it threw them to the ground but lorenzo managed to get up in seconds but Lorenzo was wearing amour and bix wasn't, so Lorenzo covered bix but the elites had other ideas, one threw a punch at bix which Lorenzo intercepted but the elite grabbed his arm and threw him out the busted window as the other two elites and brutes covered him as the elite figured that bix was a high value target and put a adhesive face piece over his mouth and nose and he struggled with the elite's superior strength for a few seconds before his strength faltered and began to go limp as the elites and brute's backed out the window to use their jet pack's to return to their phantom but a well placed shot from a lieutenant near the door hit the fuel of one of the brute jet pack's and exploded before the lieutenant backed out the door before it closed shut in front of him closing off the command centre.

(Twilight)

Twilight wanting to know more about what was going on was walking toward the giant metal building when one of the flying purple thing's came out of nowhere and five figure's jumped out and smashed through the one of the windows above a ramp leading down into the base, twilight stopped in shock for a moment before taking off at full speed toward the base but she tripped and fell while dodging one of those black figures that had been thrown out the window and was now getting up saying, "dam it bix don't do this to me again." and then he got up and ran for the door and began to hit buttons on it,

"What happened." twilight asked.

"Surprise attack."

"O-okay, whose bix."

"My best friend, the only other survivor of juno and rescuer."

Twilight sighed frustrated, but they both looked up when the group that smashed through the windows jumped back out except this time one was carrying one of the figures but with a purple thing covering it mouth and nose, its arms and legs completely limp.

"God damn it bix." the black figure said.

"That's bix?" twilight asked.

(Bix 48 minutes after ambush)

Bix was only just waking up but he knew that this wasn't the firebase, why, because they don't normally strap someone to a wall, there was two brutes by the door a rouge elite standing in front of him, and that everything was the standard purple that the covenant used, he looked at the elite and saw it turn and look back at him and it said "give us information human." and it drew its energy sword and hovered it above his left arm for a few seconds before pressing the flat of the blade against his already dry skin and bix felt his skin torch and burn and his blood boil underneath, bix let out a scream of pain loud enough to be heard back at earth, and after what felt like years the elite took the sword off his arm and bix oddly felt no pain but even he knew that was ether shock or nerve damage but in this situation either was bad but he still looked over to his right arm pinned by the clamp and saw that the energy sword had burned at least two inches into him but even he knew that the skin wasn't that thick and he knew that the sword had fused the blood, and he looked back at the elite and said. "Go to hell, split-lip."

"Split-lip? Hmm." And the elite chuckled. And swung the energy sword with such precision that he managed to slice bix's jaw in half without even touching the tongue and bix tried to scream but gargled on the blood in what was his mouth and the elite took a side swing cutting the cheeks in half's and the elite getting caught up raised the sword to skewer bix.

bix realized he was going to die and he stopped all motion and closed his eyes, he wasn't going to give the basterd the satisfaction

(Earlier.)

"What do you mean you don't know, I thought you were some big all knowing AI?" Lorenzo yelled.

"No, the covenant's action's seem to elude Me." mind meld replied.

"God damn it, just find him."

"Affirmative."

And the transmission cut but mind meld knew exactly what the covenant was doing and he calculated that this might be enough to get a reaction. And that was his goal, to get these troopers home and destroy the covenant from this world, as the as flowers called it, 'two birds with one stone'.

(Other places.)

"I just cant stand it, it's just horrible." twilight said to her friends as they watched from a distance of several marines propping up rifles and placing dog tags and helmet's on them, over top of the makeshift graves.

"I don't see how they can live like this, with all the loss of life." rarity said.

"We fight and die to protect the living." came the robotic fake voice from behind them, and they all turned to look to see the black figure standing behind them with its helmet pointed at the makeshift gravesite not at them.

"But why do ya'll fight." applejack asked.

"It's always been in humanity's nature, the brutes, the elites, and the- well the grunts are manly forced into it."

"Now's as good as a time as any." a marine said from behind them as he took off his helmet and dropped it on the floor.

"What are you doing?" the black figure asked. And the marine in the grayish amour disappeared and reappeared next to the amour before it even hit the ground and he looked at each of them before saying.

"It's been a long time since I was here."

"It's you." twilight said astonished.


	11. Chapter 11

"It's you," twilight said astonished.

"Yeah it's me," the smoke black pony with perfectly white mane and cutie mark that looked like a selection dial that was selected to a picture of him as a pony and before that on the dial it was him in marine amour and before that it was an unrecognizable creature and on the future side of the dial was blank.

"Where do you know him from," pinkie asked?

"From my first year of magic school, he was there for most of the year until the magic incident where he disappeared and was never seen again other than reports of ponies glimpsing him he was just gone," twilight explained.

"The past is the past, and since then I've had my adventures and you've had you're. Now your AI mind meld has had recent conflicting orders but now he has made his priority to return your and your troopers home and destroy the covenant but that's not the problem, the problem lies in that he plans to destroy nearly all of equestria to do it."

(Flashback: twilight, magic school, first year, day 1, confrontation.)

Twilight was walking into her first class of the year and the teacher had already posted assigned seats on the board and twilight was seated beside some pony named pelko and when she went over she said hi and the pony just grunted from inside his book and twilight just decided to sit down and not bother trying to talk, but out of curiosity she looked at the cover and saw the title, it was 'mythic mystery spells the book of unknown spells.'

"I've never seen that book before." Twilight commented but she knew she'd heard about it from somewhere.

"It's the only one," pelko replied.

"How do you know?"

"The hours of research, I've looked, and from where I got it."

"Where did you get it, then?"

"From a place."

"What place."

"A mystery place."

"You're not very helpful."

"I don't really try to be."

"Duly noted."

"Class im going to start this year by giving you an advanced warning about the magic quiz two months from now, you will have to find or create your own spell to present at the magic show." The teacher announced.

Pelko grunted and said to twilight, "Even though your cutie mark says that your talent is magic doesn't mean that you cant lose."

"Are you really going to be this competitive."

"Yes."

"Why."

But he was already ignoring her and scribbling notes on what the teacher was putting on the board so twilight shut up and began her own notes and once in a while looking over and glaring suspiciously at him and the school day went like that but when she went home she started with what she did regularly and fed baby spike and put him back to bed but she then went over to her extensive library and looked for a copy of the book pelko had but after 13 minutes she realized she didn't have one but she spotted a book that looked like it could tell her about it was titled 'the almanac of mythic books' which was on the series of books called the myths series and on page 5062 she found it, the book was about lost and forbidden spells, the book was a mystery because every pony that had read it had eventually disappeared and none of them would talk about before disappearing and the book would disappear as well until eventually appearing again in the hooves of another pony which in turn would disappear as well.

"Weird, but curios." Twilight mumbled.

(Back to real time.)

"Captain im detection one of the slip space pore's enlarging." Boris said.

"How big," bill replied.

"It's still enlarging, wait, no, how-captain im getting response from the pore."

"What do you mean?"

"Im getting a signal from an unregistered AI."

"What's the AI's priority, we need to figure friend or foe?"

"Sir, the AI it-it-it laughed at me."

"Did you get the priority list."

"Yes, sir."

"What is it?"

"Nothing sir, the AI doesn't have a priority it just has a function."

"What is its function?"

"Unknown."

And the view screen flickered to life and a completely cloaked figure came up it's chosen color was red, its face, arms, and legs were obscured by the cloak like the grim reaper and it said, "you could never find my mission and you could never breach the dimension boundary only those chosen by each dimension could and yours has already been chosen and you are not a part of it, you never were but you are the defense."

"You sound like the covenant."

And the screen started to flicker changing by Boris's count 14 people each second and when he spoke while this was happening it sounded like thousands of voices speaking at once and it said. "We were chosen, we will fight, but we are already dead."

And the transmission cut,

"Captain im detecting debris coming through the pore lots of it." Boris reported.

And a flash like a slipspace rupture came and debris of a hundred covenant ships and fighters floated through and another flash and the planet was sucked into the pore and disappeared and the pore reshaped itself into an unmistakable shape.

"Boris that shape but it's in docking bay."

"Negative, it's the secondary one."

"The secondary?"

"Sir, ONI just declared this a priority 1 we have to detain it."

"Please tell me that it's pre-damaged."

"Negative, the Marco is functioning at full capacity."

"Well, fuck."

"Wait, hold on, im receiving a signal, putting on main screen now."

And captain flowers showed up on the bridge of the Marco with crewmen in the back round their heads and arm's stuck in maintenance vent's and one popped out and his face had a scar across his forehead down to his jaw just missing his eyes and he turned to see the transmission and laughed and then said interrupting the stare down. "You do understand that no matter what you say they will never understand, never let complete what we started, and never let us return."

Flowers gave a resigned sigh and said to the marine. "I know, but they do realize that all of us are officially AWOL but as my AI 'double' here tells me that they have already declared all hands lost." Flowers said and then turned to captain bill. "You know the old saying about honor among thieves, well im going to cash that in, no matter what you do you could never destroy this ship it was built to survive even a nuke let alone some Mac round's, now if you'll excuse me im going to complete our mission."

"And what's your mission."

"Now that my friend is the question."

"You don't know what your mission is do you."

"I know what I have to do and what the end result will be."

And captain flowers winced and grabbed his right shoulder and with his arm and the marines did the same and bill could hear the several of the marine that were in the maintenance hatches hit their heads on the inside paneling and start to swear and the marine in amour removed their arms and on their right shoulders was a selection dial and selected on all of them was human and on the marine who had the scar before human on the dial was an old earth creature called a pony.

"Phase one is complete now for phase two, goodbye captain."

And the transmission cut.

"What the fuck was that about."

"Captain, im detecting energy spikes in the slipspace drive, they're going to jump."

"What, where?"

"Degree heading four-zero-zero-five-eight-seven. Calculating if anything is in that direction, the closest thing that they'll come close to is the nefarie colony but if keep heading they'll miss by 943 billion kilometers past that is the remains of the mystery shield world that they disappeared at in the first place," Boris said.

"Report this to ONI and get us under way immediately."

"Yes, sir."

(Fall of equestria.)

"We'll need a plan and a team, the eight of us isn't enough to take down mind meld."

"Wait couldn't captain flower's just order him to stop."

"Mind meld has already exceeded his programming and I don't know how far his rampancy has spread within his systems."

"Hey, wait up, you guy's need help pulling this off and I want bix back I have no idea what the covenant will do to him and mind meld wont even talk to me, we replace him and the replacement AI will at least listen," Lorenzo interrupted.

"Seems a little selfish to try and help not because our planet is in danger," twilight replied.

"Hey, if bix was here I would get dragged into this by him, so either way im helping just for different reasons, and missy you've obviously never seen the end result of covenant hospitality and even you saw them fly away with bix, so I know they have him."

"It's gruesome," marksworth muttered turning off his fake voice.

"Hah I knew it was you," twilight yelled.

"Does it really matter."

"No not really," she muttered embarrassed.

"There now that is out of the way we can get on with this mission, now we will need to get inside the bridge and then we deactivate him."

"How big of team will we need."

"Well if we could get someone whose been assigned to the bridge, only one, but we don't so this'll be a little tough."

"We'll need someone to get us to the ship."

"So a pilot."

"Yes."

" I think I can get you one of those." Marksworth said. "We will also need clearance." He added.

"Would a medical one do?" Lorenzo asked.

"You are just determined to get your friend back."

"Hey, he's my best friend and have you ever heard of no one get's left behind."

"Yes, i've heard it, its that really i've never had to deal with it before."

"Well, you've got to deal with it now and you're doing a terrible job of it, so far."

"Hey, i've got an idea, a compensation, we rescue bix use him to get a medical emergency and get aboard the marco and then we go to captain flowers to report on happened and boom we take mind meld offline." interjected one of three t-frown white figures who had walked up during their argument. While twilight was listening to them she stole a glance at fluttershy who was obviously on the verge of doing 'the stare' but twilight didn't who how that would go down but it probably wouldn't go down very well.

Twilight sighed she knew that fluttershy was to shy to say anything so she would have to.

"Hey, have any of you see anyone named gosman."

And fluttershy, twilight being too late, broke into an all out 'stare'.

the lead t-frown visibly flinched and took a step back while the other two looked at each other and then at the lead one and then looked deep into fluttershy's stare and began to feel the urge, the want, the need to tell her where gosman was and they were about to when marksworth and lorenzo got up and stood began to stand between the clones and fluttershy to break them of their trance and at that point fluttershy realized she was doing the stare and stopped.

"OH MY, I… i'm so sorry." Fluttershy stuttered.

"Oh, no it fine, I could never stay mad at… anyone," the lead one finished abruptly. "im going to scout the enemy base," he said awkwardly and activated his jet pack and took off, the two other clones shortly followed.

"What was that about," dash asked?

"you just put CT-17-83-42 in an awkward position, now, i just came up with a plan, what we'll need are three pelicans 'duel version' (a pelican with a removed troop compartment to accommodate two warthogs) and two LAAT's with three speeders each and two transport falcons to drop the initial force, and then we'll need the troops, a squad of clones and at least three squads of marines." marksworth said.

"Well, we have three clones and you, me and pilot, less than a quarter of the men we need," lorenzo pointed out.

Pelko flashed again and was marine in full armour, the set on the ground disappearing, holding his helmet in his arm and said, "Hey, you forgot me."

"Wait how do you not transform." Lorenzo inquired.

"Right I forgot none of you know of the shadow's."

"The what!"

"The shadows its basically a dimensional power possessed by only those that, well that the dimension chooses, and we are called the shadows."

"Wait, that doesn't make any sense."

"I'll explain later but first we have to rescue your friend before the covenant finish with him, because if they do it'll be the last straw for the dimensional filter."

"Again, the what!"

"The orange layer you encountered."

"I would like an explanation later."

"And you'll get one but first we have to rescue bix."

(Later in the black of night. at exactly 18:54,After every one called in a few favours they managed to get their troops and pilots willing to steal the vehicle's they'd need to pull this off)

They had the warthog's and speeders lined up were currently in the process of loading them into the pelicans when a guard walked over and demanded authorization for the deployment of the military property.

"Come on, im running a really tight schedule and these have to be deployed within minutes or else im on the hook for this," lorenzo pleaded.

Marksworth taking the situation walked over and demanded, "Corporal what is this hold up."

"The guard here wont let me deploy the remaining vehicles." Lorenzo relied.

"Why, why in all hell would you hold up this operation."

"Lack of clearance," the guard replied calmly.

"This is a classified OP and if we told every guard about it, it wouldn't be classified," marksworth firmly stated.

"Im gonna have to call this in."

"Go ahead."

and then marksworth opened a private com with all of those in on the OP and said. "double time." and the marine's jumped in the warthog's and the pelicans and LAAT's picked up the remaining vehicles in the fastest pick up ever and a falcon swooped down and picked up lorenzo and marksworth before the guard cold even react but some how he managed to grab the runner of the falcon and was holding on for dear life before marksworth sighed and pulled him in and settled him in the empty seat as lorenzo ignored him a pulled up a hologram of the covenant base and began to explain the entry/exit points of the base and put a pulsing red dot where bix's neural implant was transmitting and zoomed out to where they would drop off the small fleet of vehicles and drew a line to where they would pick up the rescue team plus bix minutes after they were dropped and then lorenzo turned to the guard and said. "which would you prefer setting the explosives in their base generator or being the rear guard of the force so someone else can do it." gesturing first to a new line leading to the generator and then to the one leading to bix, but the guard looked around and said, "where are the dropships." noticing that only the other falcon was with them now.

"the vehicle's are not to be dropped before or after 19:25, while we will be dropped at 19:07."

"that only give eight minutes!"

"no, it give's us ten."

"you know if we can get inserted by air, why cant we get extracted by air."

"no, its too hard to get on an arial vehicle while its moving."

"while its moving?"

"yes."

"your kidding, right?"

"no, were not stopping for anything."marksworth said.

"because if the covenant finish with bix the dimensional boundary will react and kill us all and nearly all the planet." lorenzo finished.

"your not serious."

"Alright you crazy s.o.b's drop in two." the pilot reported. and all the marines and odst's gave one last check of their weapons and readied to jump out when the pilot yelled. "holy shit, that's a lot of AA."

and the marines and odst's looked out to see hundreds of of AA batteries in the moonlight and worse all of them were now pivoting to track the falcons.

"i see the objective, were almost there," a marine called over the com and they all looked to see the outline of the covenant base looming just off their front.

"alright, prepare to jump." marksworth called.

but once again luck was not on their side when a pot shot from an AA wraith exploded next to the right propeller shearing of a significant amount off the propeller and damaging the engine underneath, the pilot swung the falcon to the left so the right engine was facing to base so when the left engine overpowered the right it would through them at the base before crashing, and the pilot was right but he was also right about the crashing too when the right side of the falcon hooked on the ground and flipped upside down thawing every one outside the falcon including the pilot who was bruised and scratched from the glass of the falcons canopy but the falcon kept skidding across the ground until it hit the side of the base and exploded."

"damn, that hurts!" the pilot exclaimed.


	12. Chapter 12

The energy staff is a weapon of my own design its just a foot long stick until activated and then it has a full sized energy sword on both sides. it's not standard equipment, has to be custom made.

Even though the troopers were scratched and bruised they were fine, but they were already at the door to the base when the second falcon showed up and offloaded its troops before taking off to return to base.

"Commander, we thought you went down with falcon."

"Negative private, im just getting started."

"Sir were already two minutes behind, we'll have to abort planting the explosives and head strait for the main objective."

"Affirmative, lets go."

And they all moved up on the door weapons ready and of course when the door opened there was six grunts waiting on the other side but with six well placed shots from their silenced weapons and they all dropped before one of them could even squeak.

"Move up." Marksworth ordered.

And they all searched the hallways in complete and utter silence and not even a grunt to be found and eventually they came across the locked door they were looking for and the nav beacon on the other side.

"Unlock this door lieutenant."

"yes sir." and pulled out a code hacker and set to work as two marine's covered their back as the rest all pointed their weapons at the door in front and when it opened lorenzo being in front noticed the brutes at the door first pulled out and double ended energy staff that activated in front of the brutes before lorenzo pulled back and each end cut a brute in half while in the other hand he pulled out his pistol and shot the unshielded elite before his dropped rifle even hit the ground and the medic they had acquired rushed over and deactivated the energy binders holding bix in place and caught him before he hit the ground and filled the burn in his arm with bio foam and began to place the stitching in his mouth as lorenzo crouched at his side.

(evac team.)

the six warthogs and the six speeders were hanging from their attachments to the pelicans and LAAT's and as the dropships neared the drop zone they detached the vehicle's hanging from the under side and left the marines in the vehicles hoping that their suspension was good and just before each of the vehicle hit the ground the driver would floor the accelerator to avoid being flipped from their current momentum and after they finished with their stunts and were on their way to the collect zone and the marine's in the passenger seat would climb into the empty turrets and gun down anything in their way.

(rescue team.)

"we've got less than minute, finish that stitch and lets blow out that wall." before marksworth even ordered it the explosives expert was already hard at work placing the explosives against the wall. and they all got behind cover or exited the room when the explosives blew out the wall leading to the outside and they looked out and immediately saw their ride starting to arrive, and this was their one window, so the marine's and odst's threw the pilot, the guard and bix out the hole much to their protest before jumping out themselves but the three that didn't have jet packs,pilot, guard, bix (unconscious), descents were inexplicably slowed and directed into a warthog and lorenzo smiled inside his helmet because twilight and rarity were doing their job. but lorenzo realized that their was something puling on his foot and was making him lose his balance.

he looked down just to see the elite he shot holding onto his leg before it pulled down forcing lorenzo down and itself up bringing the both of them face to face before it grabbed the top of his chest armour and punched him in the face cracking the face plate and snapping his head back and probably giving him whiplash but lorenzo managed to grab the elites arm tried to get it let go of him but to no avail but lorenzo hadn't realized they were flying around crazily until they hit the windshield of a warthog and bounced off and hit the base of the turret but the elite managed to reorient itself nearly instantly and stood up and the marine in the turret spun it in a circle as fast as it would go, smacking the elite across the face with the barrel knocking it backwards into the passenger seat as the marine let go of the turret and drew his pistol while ducking under the barrel of the turret as it spun over head and he popped back up and fired his pistol into the elite as fast as it would replace the shell with another bullet until the pistol clicked empty but by then the elite had already sagged limp and looked like swiss cheese with all the holes in him.

lorenzo got up pushed the elite out of the warthog and sat down as there was a bump from a back tire as it ran over some part of the elite.

"crazy basterd." the driver muttered.

"just drive." he retorted.

short chapter, meh


	13. Chapter 13

On record bix went into a coma soon after closing his eyes thinking the elite was going to kill him and he still is in a coma until further notice.

(3 hours after rescue with another 4 hours to go, first light.)

Marksworth woke with a start to the voice of the gunner yelling that there were ghosts and banshees gaining on their 6 and it wouldn't be long before they were in weapons range.

marksworth reflected on his brief description of the republic speeders and that all their weaponry was froward facing,

"move all the speeders to the front in arrow formation, hogs target the ghosts and i want jack hammers on those banshees." he ordered and hoped to all hell the banshees didn't get the first shot, but if this was the size of the force that was attacking them that meant the covenant was either getting cocky or that they were unlucky enough to get spotted by a covenant patrol, but marksworth trashed both ideas when the banshees split onto either side of the road and fired high, the shots passed well over their convoy and hit the trees on either side causing the to fall and pile high enough to catch a speeder which of course meant they to stop or turn but turning on the narrow road while under fire would impossible with out getting killed and stopping meant they would have to face the onslaught anyway marksworth had the warthog and speeders set up in a circle against the tree barricade and had weapons placed around for the best defence he could think of before he took the time to kneel down to be eye level with twilight While rarity was complaining about the dirtiness of the weapons, vehicles and armour.

"Twilight you have to teleport yourself rarity and bix back to base."

"but i…"

"you know that even if you stay your just a liability, the same goes for rarity and bix,"

"But what about you."

"We are soldiers, not only that we are unsc soldier's, we wont lose."

"but…"

"No, just go, and while your at it you think you can disable mind meld, that'd be great, thanks," marksworth interrupted before turning away to organize their defence.

Twilight given no choice teleport her rarity and bix straight onto the bridge of the marco surprising all but mind meld.

"Mother of god," flowers yelped.

Twilight realizing she was standing beside the pedestal that housed mind meld and before she realized it she was smashing her hoof against the buttons hoping it would do something but all it did was eject some card thing but twilight wasn't sure if that was good or not but before she could hit it again something grabbed her and pulled her back and held her in place.

"Woah there girlee what do you have against mind meld," said whoever was holding her back.

"he was the reason, he was the reason." she screamed,

"the reason for what,"

"The reason they went, the reason equestia is in peril."

"Who went where?"

"The troopers they went to rescue him," she said pointing to bix.

"Someone get a medical team in here," a person yelled off to the side.

"They had to go because he wouldn't let them, they had to go because we were doomed, we were doomed because he wouldn't save him, he was taken because he let them, he let them to doom us, he's going to doom us, he going to doom us," she wailed, rarity just looking around.

"Whoa just hold on a minute, calm down and explain," flowers said kneeling next to her, the marine still holding her in place.

But warning's we're popping up all over now with red flashing screens alarm's blaring they're alerting howl.

"Somebody report," flowers yelled.

"Were receiving warning's from automated systems about thing's that have already happened, like radar signals that picked up the cloaked phantom that attacked the canterlot firebase." someone reported without looking up from their console.

"I thought the radars were jammed in that area."

"They were, by our own jammers."

"Who authorized those jammers."

"Nobody, there was no authorization."

"Then who set them up."

"Uh sir, they were mind melds sentinels."

"You mean, mind meld sabotaged us."

"And thats not the only report of something like this happening."

"The question remains, why?"

"Sir it all links to orange layer in the atmosphere, and whatever it is it seems to be working im detecting build ups of it all over hot spots and military bases."

"Well, what ever it is that mind meld was up to we're putting a stop to it," flowers declared and walked over to the pedestal and pulled out the previously ejected chip and tossed it to marine still holding twilight, he caught with one hand while the other still kept twilight in place.

"You can let her go, and you can also take mind meld down to the storage bay for a 'proper decommissioning,'" flower stated.

"Yes, sir."

And twilight was released by the marine before he walked out the door to find the 'necessary tool's' to decommission mind meld. (meaning a sledge hammer, even in the future sledge hammers are still multi use tools).

After making sure the medics had bix and that he was going to be fine he turned to twilight and rarity who was currently complaining how 'drab' and 'styleless' the ship was, and said, "Now where are the marines that rescued bix." while he pulled out a holographic map and presented it twilight to indicate where they were.

"I think they are here," she said pointing to place on the map going off land marks.

"All right someone assemble a strike team to indicate if they are alive and prep pelicans for and evac if they are," turning to twilight, "don't worry im sure their fine."

(later.)

"All right team I see the objective, possible bodies and blood, hard to see for sure at this distance," the team's scout reported.

"Okay, move up keep your eyes peeled and ears slit open and fingers on your triggers," the team leader ordered.

The team crouched and moved up slowly to avoid being seen by any covenant stragglers.

"Uh sir, there something odd here," one of the privates said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean just look at it, where the bodies are how the vehicle are positioned and damaged, it all just seems off."

"I know what you're getting at, and I couldn't agree more."

And just as they about to enter the circle of vehicle's a half melted helmet came out of one of the shadows and squad leader bedin caught it midair and looked at it while the other odst's pointed their rifles at the shadow that the helmet had materialized from as a voice followed the helmet.

"Can you believe it, the basterd's wrecked my helmet."

"You complain to much marksworth." bedin replied. "how'd you learn not to transform."

"pelko told me." marksworth said stepping from the shadows not wearing a helmet or a breath mask or any thing to keep him from breathing the air of equestria. "as he told the rest of us." he said dramatically just as the rest of the marines and odst's got up from the supposedly bloody ground as marksworth tossed bedin an empty can. "two life saving factors here: 1) the standardization of this stuff, and 2) planning ahead." marksworth said while bedin flipped the can around to read the label which of course said 'spray-on blood'.

"Marksworth you clever basterd, how have we not won the war by now."

"Because mind meld has been sabotaging us."

Bedin face behind his helmet darkened "yeah I heard about that, but when flower figured it out he had me decommission mind meld with a sledge hammer." His voice dead serious before cracking up with laughter.

"you're kidding."

"Not even close."

and the two of them shared a laugh while the other's helped pick up the only wounded soldier who had both his legs and his pelvis crushed when a warthog flipped over and landed on him, but even then it wasn't life threatening, but after a few hours they back at base with their broken bone's being set and cut's being disinfected by fussy doctors and picky nurses while the officers sent out instructions on how to control transforming they got from pelko. and they were beating the covenant into tatters, there was only one covenant ship still flying and was taking the bombing of its life from fighters, the ground forces had lost all of their air support and the majority of their vehicle support, the infantry was limited and most of their bases were destroyed. marksworth was taking his R&R in a field of grass looking into the sky with a piece of wheat hanging from the edge of his mouth when a familiar pink face popped over his and stared into his eyes with a smile on her face.

"I heard from those two over there that you were winning so that calls for a party, although I don't know what you're winning at but im sure it calls for a party," pinkie said getting all excited.

"No." marksworth said plainly.

Pinkie's hair deflated, "N… n… NO." she said astonished.

"No." marksworth repeated.

"But party's are so much fun."

"Fun?" the word sounded alien on marksworth's lip's.

"What? You've never had fun before."

"If I have I don't remember it."

"What about family, friends wouldn't they show you how to have fun."

"My actual family who wasn't killed probably died of old age a couple hundred years ago and any friend I ever made is dead," marksworth said his voice cracking at the end.

"Then just how old are you," twilight asked thinking about what he said about his family possibly dying of old age hundreds of years ago.

"How long? That depends do you want how much i've aged or how long i've been alive."

"What do you mean?"

"what he means is that he is a spartan III, recovered barely alive from a raid on covenant ship during the fall of reach and was put in cryo onboard the frigate 'final revenge' but as the frigate tried to escape reach it took a direct hit to the reactors and exploded before it could even escape the atmosphere but out of luck his cryo pod survived the explosion was thrown clear into a recently glassed area that was still liquid and sunk into it and somehow the cryo pod didn't melt, heck it even remained frozen and the glass surrounding the pod cooled and basically immortalized him until he was recovered recently by me while on patrol." bedin said walking over.

"You mean he was their, at the original human-covenant war?" one of the marines who overheard this asked.

"Pretty much."

"And how did none of us know this."

"Because his basic story is the same as most of our unit, every one we knew or loved is dead."

The marine became absolutely silent and stared at the ground until bedin grabbed him by the shoulder and said. "don't worry about it."

"I know, I know, nothing has changed or can be changed, like you said before i'll just have to live with it."

"it's just…"

"Say no more, say no more," bedin said sadly.

"What are you all talking about?" dash interrupted rudely.

"Sad, utterly sad but true life stories."

"Ugh you guys make absolutely no sense."

"Its better that you don't."

"How so?" Twilight asked.

"Because if you knew all the things we knew, all the thing's we had seen, all the stories we've heard, the thing's we've done ourselves…" Bedin trailed off and the ponies went silent thinking.

While the awkward silence carried out bedin noticed something odd and looked up and was shocked at he saw, it was the orange stuff, that damned orange stuff, and it was rippling across the sky, when everyone else noticed he was looking they of course looked too but for some reason the pony's couldn't see it, it was an hour in and nothing still had happened but tensions were as high as ever.

The mane six ponies were asking randomized troopers questions to clarify and figure out what the marines had said earlier meant, but they could only get small stuff like what a cryo pod was, the marine's knowing that this planet had never known armed conflict, wars and violence and never should've.

but marksworth was woken from his nap when a sentinel zoomed over his head at a ridiculous speed and marksworth's first thought was mind meld but quickly reminded himself that mind meld had been 'decommissioned' and looked over to see it hold a data sheet in front of twilight and the other ponies to read before they all took off, marksworth was tempted to follow but after so many god awful years he finally had his dream come true, he could lie down in a grassy field in peace and sleep, but life was hell and in hell: there is no peace, marksworth looked up to see the orange stuff funnelling down all over and he could marine panicking and screaming, "damn." he muttered before he felt himself being lifted off the ground.

(marco)

"Captain, we could lower the risks if you let me…" the replacement AI said calmly as the ship shook and shuddered.

"No, we've messed with the planet already and we cannot mess with it any more, we have to let it heal naturally."

"And us?"

"We'll use its own powers to free us."

"There's no guarantee that they'll time it, odds are 1 in a 1000 that they'll hit that window, actually odds are 1-1234 to be precise."

"I don't wanna know what the damn odds are, just prepare a transmission that'll confuse the hell out of anyone watching."

"preparing."

"Now let's hope to hell that we'll make it."

The marco and anything not native to equestria was slowly being lifted off the ground into the air floated away with, infantry, tanks, ships, even the marco was being carried off with, the covenant had the same problem.

Onboard the marco the ship's shuddering and shaking was getting worse and the bridge crew could barely stand without falling over.

"Double, send out an emergency transmission, maybe they wont follow us and find this peaceful world, begin record."

After the recording camera had broken from its pedestal and swung around before it finally disconnected the marco slowly stopped shuddering and the orange haze was replaced by a rainbow hue and they all felt themselves entering what felt like slip space.

"Uh double please tell me what happened."

"well as you somehow figured with your tiny brain the ponies managed to hit the window with their 'element's of harmony' and all marines, tech, vehicle's and ruin's and anything we brought with us has appeared in the hanger and storage bays with the exception of a firebase, some warthogs, one elephant, a good two dozen very specific troopers, and the basic necessity's for them to survive, also the troopers that had died during our battles are some how alive with no life threatening injuries but with some nasty scars matching the way they died."

"Wait did you just say all those who died are still alive."

"The elements are pretty damn powerful." A voice said from behind flowers who promptly turned to look at him.

"Oh and captain, pelko came with us." Double mused before saying. "captain we have an extra remote piloted longsword in the hanger, its onboard computers say that it belongs to the unsc carrier billiage it was sent at the orange layer covering the planet to see what happens when it touched it."

"The unsc are already testing the dimensional borders, we have to close the gaps in the dimensional seal before someone else get through to equestria's dimension." Pelko said worried.

"How do you know so much?" Flowers asked.

"how do you not, after meeting several other shadows and such i learned a lot like the ring that activated and started your journey to becoming shadows, what you don't know is that that ring was the thirteenth made but that one wasn't made to wipe out life, the forerunners found the main portal that connect your dimension to every other dimension and they saw two reasons to close it, 1) to keep the flood in their own dimension and not let it spread any further, and 2) they saw the other dimensions as a threat to them so they recommissioned the thirteenth ring to suppress the portal, effectively closing it allowing them to wipe out sentient life in their galaxy unhindered. you know what surprises me the most is that it only took me a month to figure that out and you had how long to figure it out?"

"Thats no fair, we didn't know about the dimensions and such, plus almost all records from the forerunner era were lost."

"anyway, now to explain, those of us that are chosen by the dimensions are called shadows we've bin around since the first dimension and you are the biggest army of shadows the dimensions have ever seen and the missing supplies and troopers means that in every dimension you save from near disaster you will set up an outpost to make sure the dimension stay's safe, you will of course check up on the outpost's but the marco cant be every where at once and don't worry about the men at equestria they have already had everything explained to them."

"You are the most confusing person ever."

"Oh and a few more things, back in your dimension your bodies have already been shipped home so you don't have to worry about your families, and you have denounce the unsc."

(equestria)

"So you don't have to leave," pinkie pie said excitedly.

"No, I guess not," lorenzo said before turning to the firebase behind him, "heck they even left a place to live in."

marksworth looked and saw fluttershy trying to talk a scared squirrel into coming out of its tree and then looked over the one clone they had with them that was staring at fluttershy with a dreamy look on his and marksworth sighed before standing up grabbing gosman holding with one arm while he struggled and walked over to fluttershy with all eyes on him he tossed the clone at fluttershy's feet before saying, "talk to her before we have an over dramatized tv sitcom going on here." the clone turned the deepest shade of red he had ever seen before he turned into a pony to talk to her but didn't cover up any of the redness now enveloping his face as he blubbered meaningless words.

"Come lets leave the love birds alone and get aquatinted with layout of our new home and see if bix has woken up yet," lorenzo said.

And they all walked down the ramp into the base whale gosman made a complete and utter fool of himself.

they walked into the medical bay to see bix lying on the bed with a couple tubes in his arm took keep him hydrated and such, a panel on the wall showed brain activity and his pulse but he still didn't move, there was some sort of clear liquid pouch over his right arm and metal plate over his jaw and they could see the scars running across his cheeks, twilight remembered something she should of thought of a while ago, there was no guarantee it would work but she reached out with her hoof and touched his hand, her vision tunnelled until it was out of her sight and then it came back into sight but it was like looking a theatre screen, she was in one of those pelican things with a whole bunch of those black figures in the seat around her, she was right next to the open back and she looked and there were burning buildings everywhere, she could hear gunfire ahead where she couldn't see, she looked down and cocked her rifle before she realized that she wasn't in control of her body, she wasn't in her body, the pelican did a quick 180 while still moving in the same direction and touched down she jumped out and was firing in all directions before she jumped to the ground as one of those big green projectiles flew over head and into the ship and promptly exploded sending her and several other black figures flying end over end and when she got back up she one the other's dressed in green about to hit in the stomach with a bladed end of what looked like a giant hammer when it all paused like someone had hit a pause button when a voice said, "i never did know that marines name, he died before i could ask." and bix then promptly materialized next to her, "why are you here."

"To see if I could wake you up."

"I shouldn't ever wake up, i've done so much, seen too much, all of us have done so much harm that just knowing could endanger the harmony of this world."

"But yet your still here, on our world."

"When your in someone else's mind your mind becomes an open book while mine still stay's hidden, i know everything that's happened since i've gone unconscious yet still i don't want to leave here where my memories are my strength not my weakness."

"How can you memories be weakness."

"When they weigh your mind, depress your thought's, make you want revenge."

"But your so nice, you saved the child from almost certain death."

"Yeah i guess i did, but im still a monster."

"no, your not and the only way i can prove it is if you wake up."

after a moments pause he grudgingly agreed to wake and twilight promptly left his mind and opened her eyes in the medbay and saw that bix was already sitting up rubbing his eyes and yawning and began to pull out the tubes in his body while the others just gaped at how he just came out of his coma in seconds.

"Did yah miss me." he said.

HAPPY ENDING

the crew of the marco will have more adventures in different crossovers (aka: dimensions) that ill write, and if you ask ill continue this one.

onto next segment.

steals the muffin on the table and cackles maniacally then sinks into floor.


End file.
